


When Your Ass Hits the Pavement (That's Amore)

by aerClassic



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blackmail, Bribery, Child Death, Dream Sharing, Dysfunctional Family, Gun Violence, Heavy Angst, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Narcissist Parent, Past Child Abuse, Promiscuity as a Coping Mechanism, Semi-Graphic Descriptions of Injury, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Terminal illness mention, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-01-24 16:11:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 77,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21341035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerClassic/pseuds/aerClassic
Summary: In which Hongjoong trips over his own shoelaces, cracks in the sidewalk, and his feelings—not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Choi Jongho/Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Jeong Yunho/Kim Hongjoong, Kang Yeosang/Park Seonghwa, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 92
Kudos: 493





	1. you'll sing "Vita Bella"

**Author's Note:**

> .....with deepest apologies to Hongjoong's actual real life mother who is most likely a national treasure.

Hongjoong remembers the time and date with picture perfect clarity:  
  
Tuesday, December 3rd at 7:48AM. He’d been standing under his regular bus stop awning sandwiched between exhausted university students and dead-eyed businessmen in tailored suits when he’d fallen for his soulmate.

_ Literally_.

**\--------------**

In defiance of all known laws of physics, the soulmate connection remains a mystery of modern science that has boggled the minds of physicists the world over for centuries. Scientists like to scratch their heads and say, a little sadly, that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon with no discernible cause. No rhyme or reason for its existence. Philosophers have equated it to the magnetic pull of a soul, once split in the bright hereafter, cycling back into the world to find its missing half. Romantics like to call it the universe hand picking the love of your life, the reason for your existence, the yin to your yang.

Hongjoong thinks it’s all horseshit.

He’s fairly sure the gravitational pull between soulmates is just the cosmic equivalent of a fangirl shoving her two favorite characters together in increasingly improbable scenarios like bad fanfic. 

Hongjoong has never experienced the sensation himself, but according to social media and all the top selling romcoms, the pull is gentle at first. A steady thrum connecting yourself and your soulmate in the same way a compass faces due north—if due north was a person and not the magnetic field of the planet. Everyone he’s ever met swears it feels about the same as covering your hand in iron shavings and holding a fridge magnet a foot away; barely there consciousness just on the cusp of ripping you forward. It’s a pull that starts behind your navel when you pass close by one another and, like a gravity well in outer space, slowly increases in force the more time spent in close proximity until both parties are forced to touch and likewise sever the connection.

Supposedly.

And not all soulbonds are romantic. Some happen between siblings or family members, between bright-eyed elementary kids and hobbling retirees, so it’s a small mercy that the connection is closed off once physical contact is made. It leaves a mark on the skin—most of the time the size of a thumbprint but there are cases of intricate artworks blooming across the whole body depending on the ‘rightness of the universe’ or whatever the fuck—but, once made, the forceful yanking between souls settles into a vague awareness easily ignorable in the day-to-day.

The vast majority of soulbonds do end in relationships, though, either from actual compatibility or societal pressure and Hongjoong thinks _ that’s _ horseshit too.

Case in point: his parents. His mother, an internationally recognized actress, had been giving a speech at a charity gala for wounded orphans—or possibly just for her wounded ego from losing the award for Best Actress not two months prior—when suddenly she had lurched forward and stumbled into the podium. The media frenzy it created had been in the news cycle for _ weeks_. Clips of his father, a soft hearted cardiologist attending that very same gala, tripping over his own shoelaces and spilling his wine down his starched white shirt to the sound of the crowd gasping circled the local news like the pope had come to town. 

His mother basked in the attention, loved every minute of the camera following the two of them along on their publicized whirlwind romance that culminated in a lavish wedding not two months later. Two people coming together thanks to that biological manifestation of the Universe’s purpose. It was the stuff of fairytales and they were overnight media darlings.

But the cameras never showed the behind the scenes arguments. They never showed the heartbroken woman his father had been engaged to for the better part of the year, paid off so she’d disappear neatly into the background. Film depicting the friction caused by their fundamentally different lifestyles destroyed by producers thanks to the bloated wallets of media executives looking to sell their next headline.

After a full documentary on the wedding, six movies based around their stories his mother concocted in a tell-all book, and a whole host of talk show appearances, she’d managed to con Hongjoong’s reluctant father into knocking her up for even greater attention. The way the news organizations broadcast the news of his birth you’d think he was the next coming of Jesus Christ himself rather than the unwanted offspring of two people bound by fate but not by affection.

In short: _ horseshit_.

**\--------------**

It is especially galling that Hongjoong, standing still and minding his own fucking business waiting for the public transport his mother absolutely detested him using—which is at least nine tenths of the reason he did it—surrounded by people he sees in batches every day of the week, gets his legs jerked from beneath him with the flow of traffic so hard he lands ass first on the concrete sidewalk. 

“Oh,” he says a little dazedly while the crowd offers him supportive hands up and a few overly excitable high schoolers start giggling about a possible soul connection right in front of their eyes. “_Oh no_.”

“Sir, are you alright?” One man pats him on the shoulder. “Can you stand?”

He can already hear the shutters of hired paparazzi cameras in the distance approaching quick. Fuck. “Thank you, but I can stand by myself.” Hongjoong manages to get himself upright, only wobbling once at the strange thrumming tug behind his navel heading in the opposite direction. Someone asks him a question that he doesn’t hear over the doom and gloom settling over his head like a depressive fog.

He knows two things:

  1. He has a soulmate living here in Korea.
  2. He’s going the fuck _home_ to wallow in self-pity.

Paparazzi try to swarm him as he makes his way shakily towards his apartment building—and away from his obligations for an end of term study group. Usually they want to ask him about his mother’s latest book or her newest role in a film or how his father’s hospital was running, but today they fall over one another firing off question after question about soulmates and if Hongjoong ‘has ever met them before today? How does it feel? Will you track them down?’

He barely processes punching in the code to his building, greeting the armed bodyguard standing intimidatingly in the entrance lest any shutterbugs get the bright idea to rush through, and takes the elevator to his floor.

Fuck.

Fuckity fuck fuck he has a _ soulmate_.

**\--------------**

The vultures running gossip sites and tawdry magazines have already started running speculative articles about his would-be connection. A starlet passing by on her way to set, perhaps? The producer of one of his mother’s most anticipated films of the year, maybe. It could have been any of the pedestrians on the street, the nameless people going about the daily grind of waking up to go to work, the bus full of people headed for the shopping district. 

His name trends on Naver.

Hongjoong reads the first three articles—each one escalating higher than the last on his potential life partners or whatever the hell they’re running with now—before he slams his laptop closed and ducks beneath the comforter of his bed pretending he doesn’t exist.

Even better, he hopes he never has another run in with his soulmate.

**\--------------**

**“Kim Hongjoong: Son of beloved Park Misun and Kim Beomseok meets his soulmate?!”**

**“Son of Park Misun Could Be Off the Market Ladies! Here’s Our Top Guesses:”**

**“Love Blooms at the Bus Stop! Kim Hongjoong, ready to marry?”**

**“EXCLUSIVE: FOOTAGE OF KIM HONGJOONG’S SOUL CONNECTION”**

_ ……Comments: _

  * _stanACE_  
_ omg nooooo he’s found them already??!?!? i’m so jealous_ 😭😭😭😭  
  

  * _OPPAK!NK_  
_ It’s been windy today. Perhaps he just fell over from a strong gust? Either _  
_ way I wish him nothing but happiness._  
  

  * _chaByungchul_  
_ Am I supposed to know who this young man is?  
_

  * _JiminYesJams:  
G U Y S have you seen this video?! It might be you know who!! https://youtu.be/Eup0…_

_ A video ripped from snapchat: it opens with a young woman, possibly in her twenties, holding the phone just high enough to show her face and the crowded bus behind her. Most seats are occupied by tired youth obviously making the trek to school, though there are a few elderly persons sitting in the window seats. _   
_  
“Yah, unni,” the young woman whispers conspiratorially into her mic. “Check out the tall one with the bleached hair.” The video shakes as she attempts to shift to a clearer view of a man about her age listlessly holding on to a hand rail and yawning wide into his fist. “He’s cute,” she continues in a muffled voiceover, “I don’t feel anything but I should try anyway, right?”_

_ Before she can show off the grinning victory sign, the young man lurches forward hard enough that he stumbles and falls in the middle of the aisle and crushes a milk drink someone had been holding between their feet. The video ends just as shocked yelling begins. _

**\--------------**

Hongjoong avoids human interaction by holing himself up in the suite of offices rented by his mother’s agency mostly as a tax write off. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen another living being in the empty hall, and that had been a very determined rat chewing at the drywall in the entrance. He’s been given a token amount of PR work since the usual assistant in charge is on maternity leave for the next six weeks which means sending off incendiary emails in the hopes he can get himself fired for good.

His phone chimes.  
  
**woo** [10:24 AM]  
you playing hooky?

**honkhonk** [10:24 AM]**  
**didnt feel like dealing w everyone today

**woo** [10:28 AM]  
cool where at?  
i have Gossip

**honkhonk **[10:29 AM]**  
**…

**woo **[10:29 AM]**  
** i have gossip  
and also those chips you like?????

**honkhonk **[10:32 AM]**  
** better  
im in bldg c you know the one  
tell angry mr choi to let you in

**woo **[10:35 AM]**  
** omg   
i hate him he’s so scary!  
he makes me want to breakout my safe word  
dhsfkfd  
mr c: *grunts*  
me, sobbing: BUTTERNUT

**honkhonk **[10:38 AM]**  
** fuckign  
just get over here you gay disaster

Not thirty minutes later he can hear the unmistakable gait of Jung Wooyoung Naruto-running through the hallways stopping at the closed door of his office. “Hyung! Do I have to pay for the damages if I kick this door in like in the movies?”

“Probably not,” Hongjoong calls back with a snicker hidden behind his hand. “If you manage to break it off the hinges, I’ll buy you that ugly Louis Vuitton wallet you want.”

Behind the door, Wooyoung gasps like he’s been offered a once in a lifetime deal instead of middling quality leather goods with an exorbitant price tag. “Done! Stand back from the door, I’m about to Superman this bitch open.”

The door rattles briefly when Wooyoung slams his full weight into from the other side which is then followed by Wooyoung howling in pain as he drops to the floor still on the other side. Hongjoong bites back laughter and opens the door to reveal Wooyoung rolling from side to side clutching at his knee.

“Superman this bitch, huh?”

“Fuck off,” Wooyoung whimpers. “It was a good idea in theory just lacking in execution.”

“Literally no part of your plan was a good anything.” Hongjoong offers his hand for Wooyoung to grab and together they manage to get him upright, if limping only a little. “What’s the gossip and where are my chips?”

“Firstly, your chips are gone because I got hungry on the trip over here.” Wooyoung hobbles towards another office to jiggle the lock open. “And secondly, the gossip is I met someone and I think I’m in love.”

“You fall in love way too easily,” Hongjoong accuses while Wooyoung makes himself at home in a plush office chair he drags from the adjoining room. “I can’t even begin to count the amount of times you’ve been here swearing the latest guy you met on grindr is ‘the one’ and offering to let him move in after three dates.”

Wooyoung pouts. “Hey, some of them weren’t so bad. Remember Mark?”

Hongjoong pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mark ran phishing scams out of his grandmother’s basement and tried to gain access to your bank accounts when you went out of town with your dance troupe.”

“Well yeah, but he was cute and he had money,” Wooyoung sniffs theatrically and props his feet one over the other on the edge of Hongjoong’s desk. “We all have our flaws.”

“Other people’s money, you mean. I don’t think running scams on the gullible and infirm counts as a quirky character flaw,” Hongjoong muses before prodding at Wooyoung’s shoes. “And get your feet off my desk, leech.”

“You’re so grouchy today,” Wooyoung whines, replacing his feet with his face, chin propped against the edge while his fingers tap formless rhythms against the hardwood surface on either side. “What’s got your panties in a bunch? Your mom again?”

“Worse.” Hongjoong types out another ‘thanks for expressing interest in our company but screw off’ email and hits send when it meets his exacting standards—re: terrible and insulting. “Ran into my soulmate waiting for the bus.”

Wooyoung squeals high pitched enough that Hongjoong winces and debates plugging his ears in self-defense. “Oh my god! Who was it? Were they nice? Did you get a big mark? Tell me everything!”

Hongjoong eyes the hopeful slant to Wooyoung’s mouth. “You didn’t already see it in the news?”

Wooyoung waves him off. “You know I don’t pay attention to any of that nonsense. They once said you had a fling with the woman who used to be your mom’s secretary.”

Hongjoong pulls up another media appearance proposal and cracks his knuckles in preparation for the absolute ass reaming he’s about to send in response. “Who’s to say I didn’t?” 

“Hyung,” Wooyoung deadpans. 

Hongjoong avoids looking at him in favor of typing out another line of vitriol to the 9 o’clock news team. “What.”

“You are the most flagrantly gay man I have ever met and I know Park Seonghwa,” Wooyoung continues mercislessly. 

Hongjoong snorts, still typing away. “Should I take that as an insult or a compliment?” 

“Both,” Wooyoung decides after a moment of intense thought. “Anyway, your soulmate, how did it go?”

“It didn’t,” Hongjoong mumbles and ducks behind his computer screen for Maximum Camouflage. “I was just waiting for the bus and then suddenly I was on the ground from being yanked around by literally nothing.”

Wooyoung blinks at him with his chin still resting on the edge of his desk. “You fell?”

“Yeah. It was pretty embarrassing.”

“But you didn’t actually see who it was? Or touch them?” Wooyoung asks.

“No.” Hongjoong starts another email—’dear whoever the fuck at channel 3’—and pretends the suddenly serious questioning from one of his dearest friends doesn’t mean horrible things for his personal wellbeing in the near future. “I’m assuming they were passing me in a car, but…” He trails off in a shrug.

Wooyoung makes a considering noise. “Have you ever felt the tug before now?”

“Not a thing.” He’d honestly hoped he was one of the rare few that never met their soulmate or, even better in his opinion, didn’t have one at all. He’d felt relatively certain of no cosmic fuckery in his future until the events of today. “This was the first time I’d felt anything at all.”

“Wow,” Wooyoung whistles low before sitting upright in his chair. “Hyung, you must be really, _ really _ compatible with this person. Most people I know say it only feels like someone tugging your sleeve or something small before it gets to the big yanks.”

Hongjoong glances at the splatter mark on Wooyoung’s right hand. “Don’t you know?”

“Pfft, I wish.” Wooyoung slouches in his seat with an exaggerated pout. “I met my soulmate when I was too young to remember it and now I don’t even know who they _ are_.”

Hongjoong takes in the dejected slump of Wooyoung’s shoulders and the pensive look on his face. For someone so obsessed with the soul connection, it doesn’t seem fair that Wooyoung can’t enjoy it for himself. “Can’t you feel them?”

Wooyoung shakes his head. “The only thing I know is—they’re far.” His eyes glaze over. “Really far.”

“I’m sorry, Wooyoung-ie,” Hongjoong says sincerely. “Want to hear what I’m sending to the nice people at mom’s publishing company?”

Wooyoung immediately perks up. “Please tell me you’re insulting their choice in laminate again.”

**\--------------**

Unfortunately, the brief respite from the real world is just that—brief. The second his mother returns from her late evening radio show appearance, the door to his bedroom crashes open to reveal her standing in the entrance, furious, and with a ferocious scowl on her mouth. Hongjoong considers the distance from his bed to the giant window overlooking the street and how best to fling himself from the top floor of their building as she stalks forward.

The sound of her heels clicking against the glossy tiled floor is like nails on a chalkboard.

“Hongjoong,” she seethes at him between clenched teeth. “Just who do you think you are?”

“Misun-ssi, what an absolute delight to be in your presence this evening,” Hongjoong simpers while closing his laptop to shield his music program from her line of sight. “What can I do for you?”

Somehow, and Hongjoong hadn’t thought it was possible, his mother’s lips downtown harder. She almost resembles one of those dried apple dolls he’d seen in a book about American history—all dried up and pinched inward like she’s sucking ten lemons. “Stop calling me that. I am your mother and you will address me as such.” She smooths a hand over an errant lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead. “What is this I’m hearing about you finding your soulmate?” Her voice rises in pitch, Hongjoong winces. “The week before my latest film is set to start playing in theaters? You did this on purpose!”

“How was I supposed to know—”

“I was humiliated on my own talk show!” She continues in childish anger. “So many people called in asking about you, you, _ you _ and I had no idea what they were talking about until my sound assistant handed me a print out of the first page on Dispatch. Dispatch, of all places!”

Hongjoong lets her rant. He knows from experience that trying to reason with her when she’s this worked up over essentially nothing—more to the point: something that’s not even his fault—is an exercise in futility he doesn’t have the mental fortitude to even try to navigate. 

“I have been working for _ months _ on this movie and here you are undermining my efforts by falling over in public for no reason.” She grabs a fistful of his shirt. “How dare you?”

Delicately, he peels her fingers out of his shirt until she huffs and snatches her hand away. “First, I didn’t do anything on purpose. I was just waiting for the bus—”

“You should be taking the car—” She tries to interject but Hongjoong continues. 

“I was just waiting for the bus when my feet were pulled out from under me.” Hongjoong scrubs a hand down his face and droops until he can look at the floor instead of the crimson-cheeked demon in front of him. “I didn’t tell you because I hope it never happens again.”

She rolls her tongue over her teeth behind the pinched purse of her mouth and Hongjoong waits for the explosion. “So, you’re telling me you falling over in broad daylight, in a very public place I might add, that wasn’t you trying to pull another one of your silly little pranks because you hate me so much?” 

“No,” Hongjoong says quickly before she can start in on her usual ‘woe is me’ spiel that ends in tears and Hongjoong getting the short end of the stick in the blame game. “Mom, if I had known running into my soulmate was going to happen today I would have stayed home. You know how I feel about them.”

His mother huffs, arms held akimbo and a slow tap starting against her elbow with a forefinger. Hongjoong counts the seconds he’s wasting by sitting here listening to her selfish tirade—tap, tap, tap. 

“Do you feel them now?” She asks, shockingly sounding like a genuine question. 

Hongjoong hesitates before nodding. “Kinda. If I concentrate.”

She goes quiet. Too quiet. Hongjoong can only imagine the cogs starting to turn in her brain at the knowledge her son, who holds some modicum of fame just by association, could potentially overshadow her acting career by falling into the same trap that had her skyrocketing to the number one story on the front page of every magazine from here to Timbuktu however many years ago. He shivers. Times like these he wished his father didn’t spend so much time at the hospital so he could shield his son from the worst of his mother’s narcissism. 

“I’m going to offer you a deal,” she finally starts with an edge in her voice that brooks no argument, “Keep this soul connection of yours out of the public eye for at least another week, at least until the premiere is finished, and I will take over the publicity side of things for you after the press junkets are done.” She pulls out her phone to aggressively type something up that Hongjoong can’t see. “Do that and I’ll fund that ridiculous music career you’ve been trying to start up under my nose.”

He eyes her suspiciously as she continues to stare down at whatever she’s speed writing—speed texting, whatever. “What do you mean you’ll fund my career?” His fingers twitch with the urge to grab at his laptop, music program stalled and hidden. “Anyway, I don’t need your help, I can get by on my own merits. You can’t buy someone a successful career in music.”

“You want out of this building, right?” His mother smiles, all teeth and not at all motherly. “Keep it hidden, agree to let me be in control of how and when the news is revealed, and I will buy you a studio space.” Hongjoong swallows. He knows he’s been made when her smile widens into a cocksure smirk. “In your name, Hongjoong-ah, with a monthly stipend until you’re on your feet. Anywhere in the country, all you have to do is say yes.”

A studio in his name. A production office he could engrave his name on for the world to see. A dedicated space to work on the things he’s passionate about without his mother to breathe down his neck for saying or doing the wrong thing. No more walking on eggshells in his own home. It sounds like a trap, but by god it’s one made especially for him and Hongjoong is desperate—has been desperate for years now to escape from beneath the oppressive weight of her thumb.

“Alright, but on one condition,” Hongjoong holds up a finger while she rolls her eyes. 

“Yes?” 

“When I leave, I leave for good,” He stresses, “That means no showing up in my space unannounced or uninvited. We clear?”

“Crystal.” She grits her teeth hard enough that Hongjoong imagines he can hear her jaw crack. Misun spins around to leave. Before she’s totally out of the room she pauses in the doorway to turn back and say, calmly, “This should go without saying, but don’t go tattling about our deal to your father. You know how he gets about my businesses.”

Hongjoong hums in agreement. His mother eyes him a moment longer before finally leaving, the sound of her heels disappearing to the other side of the house echoing over the throaty ‘ah-ah-ah’s she does for vocal warmups. 

He blows out a breath when she’s finally out of earshot, getting up to close his door and slumps against the polished wood. Hongjoong slides down until he’s curled protectively around his middle. Whoever they are, whoever is at the other end of the distant tug behind his navel, Hongjoong sends his soulmate a silent apology. 

For himself and for their rotten luck.

**\--------------**

After a week of dodging heavily invested paparazzi and less invested but no less curious classmates, Hongjoong spends his last free Saturday afternoon before exams kick off at the skatepark supporting a pair of close friends in competition. Kang Yeosang, the epitome of e-boy meets skater punk chic, and Park Seonghwa, a man who _ looks _ like an extra from an edgy indie music video but enjoys bright pop music almost as much as the baby shark song, are an unlikely pair he met during a GSA meeting he attended once on a lark almost four years ago to the day. They are equal parts soft-hearted gummy bears who dedicate hours to icing perfect little rainbow flags on sugar cookies and evil little gremlins—and just so happen to be soulmates. Yeosang’s marks manifested as thick black bands around his neck and most of his left arm while Seonghwa has the equivalent of a Jackson-Pollock nightmare down the entirety of his right side to match.

Hongjoong hate-loves them.

“What’s the prize for this one?” He asks while he and Seonghwa watch Yeosang line up at the edge of the starting ramp, nervously toying with the piercings on either side of his bottom lip. 

Seonghwa shrugs, unconcerned. “Some small amount of money and a three month supply of coupons for BHC chicken.” His hyung throws a kernel of popcorn into the air and tries to catch it in his mouth. The kernel bops off the end of his nose and lands in the dirt beneath their feet. Seonghwa pouts at it before continuing, “We don’t care about the money but you know how Yeosang is about chicken.”

“Do I,” Hongjoong snorts. “Yeosang tried to sell you for a bucket of chicken once.” 

“Don’t be silly.” Seonghwa crunches on the last piece of popcorn and crumbles the empty container until it fits in his pocket. “I’m worth at least three buckets, he wouldn’t have settled for anything less than two. Plus, we were drunk.”

“Whatever you say,” Hongjoong replies bland.

They both watch as Yeosang’s turn is announced and he disappears down the somewhat too tall for his blood pressure ramp for the lead up to the first trick. Seonghwa tenses when Yeosang’s arms shake holding himself up on the edge of the ramp one handed before gliding smoothly back down. Hongjoong has no idea what any of the moves are called, but they look neat and as long as no one is getting hurt it’s fairly fun to watch. Up to the point where Seonghwa starts crowding into his personal space to hide his face when Yeosang starts doing the really interesting whatever-the-fucks. 

“Oh god, I can never watch this part.” Seonghwa tries to bury his head in the opening of Hongjoong’s coat. “Hongjoong-ah, tell me when it’s over or else I’ll _ cry_.”

The judges, at least, seem impressed.

“You’re always crying, idiot.” Seonghwa slaps at his thigh because he’s a _ child_. “But I think the worst of it is over.” Hongjoong prods at Seonghwa’s bicep when Yeosang finally dismounts and waves to the cheering crowd. “Hyung,” Hongjoong laughs and prods Seonghwa harder in his side, “Seriously, get your face out of my jacket before I make you eat that piece of popcorn you dropped earlier.”

“You’re a dick,” Seonghwa says feelingly, though muffled by Hongjoong’s jacket still, only turning his face away when the announcer calls for the next skater on his crackling megaphone. “Let’s go stake a claim on a picnic table before the soccer moms start showing up.”

Hongjoong’s phone dings a few times while they wait—excitable messages from Wooyoung, a reminder of the next study times from his group, an angry email from his mother about the equally angry emails he’d sent out on Tuesday finally making the rounds—but he leaves them unanswered while Seonghwa recounts the fresh meat he’d pulled into the latest meeting.

“He’s going to break so many hearts,” Seonghwa says fondly. “Once he gets over the scared baby gay phase, at least.”

“You said the same thing about Yujin and now she’s an unholy terror,” Hongjoong groans, “Please let him discover the scene by himself instead of feeding him dick shaped cookies and making him cry about his repressed feelings for three hours in your weird safe room like you did with her.”

“Stop calling my office my weird safe room,” Seonghwa gripes. “And I fed her lady fingers, get it right.”

“Jesus,” Hongjoong groans into the worn wood while Seonghwa cackles. Yeosang chooses that moment to drape his arms over Hongjoong’s shoulders and drop his chin like a heavy weight against the crown of his head.

“What are we laughing at?” He asks, voice a little gruff from exertion. Hongjoong kicks at Seonghwa’s shin before he can say anything inappropriate about it.

“Just the usual.” Seonghwa kicks him back. “Hey, you wouldn’t sell me for just one bucket of chicken, right?”

“Please,” Yeosang waves off the concern, “You’re worth _ at least _ two.” Yeosang finally relents and stops trying to crush Hongjoong’s lungs into the table to walk over and scrub a hand through Seonghwa’s fringe. “Maybe even three.”

Hongjoong watches Seonghwa grin bright, reaching up to rub a hand over the darkest mark visible on Yeosang’s wrist and placing a kiss to center of his palm. He’d be jealous if they weren’t the grossest people he knew. 

“And you’d come back for me eventually. Right babe?” Seonghwa sways their linked hands in the air like he’s trying to shake change loose. Yeosang purses his mouth in faux contemplation. “Right. Babe.” Seonghwa says through gritted teeth.

Yeosang snickers before dropping a kiss to Seonghwa’s cheek. “Yeah, sure, whatever. I’m going to buy tteokbokki, anyone else want any?”

“I’ll just steal some of yours,” Seonghwa suggests with a bat of his eyelashes.

“The hell you will.” Yeosang smushes his hand down the length of Seonghwa’s nose. “Hongjoong-hyung?”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “I’m good. Thanks anyway.”

Seonghwa watches him go with a dreamy sigh and a revolting look of adoration on his face. “He’s going to bring two orders back, just watch.”

“You two are disgusting.” 

“We’re _ soulmates _ who are in _ love_,” Seonghwa mocks back, “We’re allowed to be disgusting.”

“No, you’re just regular disgusting, the soulmates part just makes it worse.” Hongjoong scowls and kicks at him beneath the table again. 

Seonghwa just catches his feet between his calves with a pleasant hum. “So. Tell me about your mishap at the bus stop, young man.”

God, as if he needed the reminder. “What’s to say? I was minding my own business and I fell over. End of story”

Seonghwa eyes him for a long time. Long enough that another skateboarder is called to the lineup over the sound of polite clapping. Someone is blasting scathing rap over a portable stereo and several frazzled moms are trying their damnedest to get it to stop. Hongjoong empathizes with them a bit considering he wants this conversation to stop almost as badly.

“Are you going to try and locate them?” Seonghwa questions gently.

“Fuck no, are you kidding me? That’s the last thing I want to do.” Hongjoong only just resists the urge to slam his forehead into the wooden slats of their picnic table. “And anyway I was basically forced to sign a contract with mother’s company to let her handle the media bullshit surrounding the reveal. I just have to avoid whoever it is until she gives up.”

By the look on Seonghwa’s face, he probably should have kept that tidbit to himself. “Was it forced or—”

“No,” Hongjoong is quick to deny, but thinks better of it and backtracks, “Well, sort of, but she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Seonghwa’s brows raise high on his forehead and he motions for Hongjoong to continue with a jerk of his chin. “My own studio, anywhere I want, and without her being able to barge in whenever she pleases.”

“Sounds too good to be true,” Seonghwa releases his hold on Hongjoong’s feet to let them swing freely down. “And all you have to do is give her free reign over the press release about your soulmate?”

He nods. “That’s it.”

“I see.” Seonghwa fiddles with the cuffed edge of his sweater. “I know you don’t believe in the concept of soulmates”—Hongjoong bites the inside of his cheek to keep the angry outburst in check—“but I do think you’re doing yourself a disservice by not trying to find out who it is.” Seonghwa reaches out then to tap their fingers together, just a small moment of contact so Hongjoong knows this isn’t Seonghwa trying to guilt trip him into doing something he doesn’t want. “Hongjoong, I didn’t start falling over until Yeosang and I had been passing each other on the street _ every other day _ without realizing who the pull was coming from. _You _ fell over the instant you guys were in range.” Seonghwa gives his fingers a brief squeeze before backing off again. “That’s something _ unique_.”

“I don’t want unique, though. I want to live a quiet life and die in the woods,” Hongjoong mutters. “Not all soulmates are created equal, you know? Even if it’s a platonic match, I don’t want them to feel pressured to be with me because my parents are famous.” He scrunches his nose up and avoids looking at Seonghwa’s concerned face by searching the crowd for Yeosang’s beanie covered head. “Or for me to pretend I care just because the news is shitting their pants over us.”

Seonghwa opens his mouth to give his rebuttal just as Yeosang comes around a large family of five trying to wrangle a picnic blanket in place with two cups of steaming hot tteokbokki.

“Aw, babe, did you buy one for me?” Seonghwa reaches out to take a container from his soulmate’s hands. 

Yeosang just dodges his arms and plops himself down next to Hongjoong instead. “Why would I do that? These are both for _ me_.” He says smug, though he ruins it a second later when he slides a cup in Seonghwa’s direction anyway. “What did I miss?”

Around a mouthful of too spicy rice cake, Seonghwa barely gets out, “Just Hongjoong being a chickenshit.”

“Hey!” Hongjoong cries and, “What the hell, dude?”

“Oh,” Yeosang blinks and spears another rice cake on his toothpick. “That’s not really new.”

“Fuck both of you, seriously,” Hongjoong throws a napkin at Yeosang’s smug face. “Why don’t you go away to practice your kick flips or wheelies or whatever.”

Yeosang shrugs and offers him a bite that Hongjoong scowls at. “But making fun of you is so much more entertaining, hyung.”

Despite the crowd's cheers and the judges' impressed onlooking, Yeosang ends up missing first place by a margin of two points and pretends he's not sour over the loss. Hongjoong buys the three of them chicken anyway.

**\--------------**

Hongjoong always feels weirdly adrift when he leaves the presence of Seonghwa and Yeosang’s particular brand of soul connection. The easy way they flit in and out of each other’s orbit, how Yeosang can be lightyears away and still be in tune with Seonghwa enough that he knows exactly what to say or do to make Seonghwa laugh or pull him out of a too thoughtful headspace—it makes him...not _ jealous_, not really, but maybe wistful. They have something he’ll never allow himself to enjoy.

He’s only ever had cheap run-ins with men he finds on hookup apps and in clubs, quick sessions in the back of shitty bars and dingy motel rooms. Sometimes he wonders if sharing a soul connection, having a soulmate who understands him and his needs, would make any of it better.

Probably not, he thinks sourly as the distant click of pap cameras follow him down the street. If nothing else his soulmate would probably just make the paparazzi frenzy worse. Click, click, click, beep, follows him long enough that even the people on the sidewalk—who more than likely have no idea who he is—begin to give him a wide berth and whisper behind their face masks and their hands. He should have taken a cab home.

Unthinking, mostly to escape the shutterbugs following hopefully at a distance, Hongjoong ducks into the promising opening of a coffee shop slash bookstore he’d seen on the way to Yeosang’s competition. He’s not really a coffee drinker but the smell is nice and there are pictures of bready sweets he wouldn’t mind trying.

Just his luck, there’s a crack where the doorjamb meets the sidewalk that he trips over sending the three excitable camera wielding dickheads frothing at the mouth. Which, really, should have been his first clue.

He sighs deeply, bowing to the few people clustered around tables at the entrance giving him wide eyed looks of shock. “Sorry to bother you,” he apologizes quietly, “Please enjoy your meals.”

The barista at the counter is giving him the distrustful side eye. Hongjoong dips his head down in apology to her, too.

The shop is actually bigger than he thought, enough for twelve decently large tables, with a staircase leading upwards presumably to the bookshop. To get away from the idiots hovering outside, he bypasses the front counter and heads up—out of sight, out of mind. 

Horrifying enough, as soon as he makes the landing, Hongjoong trips forward again, only this time it’s by that universal tug behind his navel. Out of the corner of his vision, he sees someone’s bleach blond head stumble with him. He books it down the flight of stairs, out of the door, and into the street again before they can get a good look at each other—the need to run away and hide overpowering the gravitational pull of his soul connection.

“Wait,” someone, a man, shouts behind him.

He doesn’t.

**\--------------**

Hongjoong runs until his legs nearly give out, until his lungs burn and his vision darkens, and spends almost the entirety of his weekend cowering in his room beneath his blankets with only the steady thrum of traffic outside and his laptop for company. He’s not curious about the mystery man trying to chase him down. He’s not interested in whatever his soulmate has to offer and he sure as shit isn’t going to jeopardize his escape from beneath the oppressive thumb of his family legacy by finding out, either.

Hours before his study group is set to meet on Monday morning, he makes the relatively short train ride to Jamsil-dong, switching over to a cab to take the rest of the way to the hospital his father works in. It’s a giant thing, paid for by the foundation he set up after who knows how many thousands of well-wishers around the world sent in donations for his nuptials with his soulmate, and yet his father has never allowed the fame or glory to go to his head. He’s kept his job as a cardiac surgeon and saved countless lives instead of retiring to live in their luxury highrise.

He’s nice. Down to earth. A little socially backwards, maybe, but nice. Hongjoong likes him a whole hell of a lot more than he likes his mother at any rate.

The nurses at the front desk just wave him in when Hongjoong flashes his perpetual visitor’s pass, used to his presence and his constant in and outs by this point. 

“Come to see the little ones again, Hongjoong-ah?” An older nurse, Hyojung, greets him in the sterile elevator dressed in scrubs almost as worn and faded as her grey hair. Her soulmark is a splotch of red at the base of her throat she carries with pride. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen you in the ward.”

“It has,” Hongjoong shoulders his schoolbag pointedly with a slight frown. “I’ve been busy with school and everything else.” He presses the slightly raised button for the pediatric ward and leans back against the stainless steel side rail. “You know how it goes.”

Hyojung hums pleasantly, hands curled in the front pockets of her scrub top. “I saw the news,” she says simply. Hongjoong flinches without thinking and she runs a wrinkled but no less comforting hand down the length of his arm over his hoodie. The elevator pauses briefly to load an exhausted med student on his first rotation. “Yeseul is going to be devastated, you know. She had her little heart set on the two of you growing old together, had a little house built in the countryside and everything.”

“She was going to be disappointed no matter what,” Hongjoong says fond, shuffling closer to Hyojung to give the newest passenger room to fall asleep on his feet in mere seconds of resting against the back of the elevator. “I’m too old for her anyway.”

Hyojung chuckles low, mindful of the young man nearly snoring next to them. “Love makes you blind to many things.”

Hongjoong supposes that’s fair, but he knows he’d rather be the type that falls in love with their eyes wide open and heart carefully guarded. 

Hyojung leads the way into the pediatric recovery center where two little girls are trying their damnedest to build a castle with carefully cleaned plastic toys and a few stray picture books propped up as support structures. One is missing most of her hair, the few remaining strands pulled up high in a ponytail to cover the worst of her scarring, and the other still has her legs and arms wrapped in white gauze from the latest skin grafts. 

“Ladies,” Hyojung claps, once, to get their attention. “Look who I ran into on the way up.”

Something in his chest finally seems to unclench at the pair of them turning, lighting up from the inside out in excitement, and yelling at the top of their lungs. “Oppa!”

Hongjoong can’t help but laugh when they almost fall over each other trying to see who could get to him first, and crouches down to hold his arms open so they can hug his neck. Yeseul makes it first, unhindered by the gauze making Jimin’s gait slower—more awkward—and she hugs tight to his neck.

“Oppa, where have you been? It’s been ages!” Yeseul backs up enough to bat her tiny hands against his cheeks in reprimand. He can see Hyojung spin around with a hand covering her mouth to conceal a snorting laugh. “I even had my hair all pretty and you weren’t here to see it!”

Hongjoong laughs too, taking one of Yeseul’s hands in his to mime biting at the digits just to hear her squeal. Jimin finally makes it to them, and latches on to Hongjoong’s other side with a quiet sigh, burying her head in his neck. He rubs her back, gently, careful to avoid the patch on her back that’s only recently healed over.

“Hey Jimin-ie, did you miss me?” She nods, still quiet. Yeseul moves behind her and mouths, ‘It’s her birthday’ with exaggerated pointing motions at her back with her eyes huge and excited. Hongjoong gives her a thumbs up while Hyojung and another nurse trade light gossip over a new chart in the background. “A little birdy told me it was your birthday. How old are you now? 9? 27?”

“I know what Yeseul is doing behind my back,” Jimin says plainly still hidden in his chest. Hongjoong grins at Yeseul’s affronted gasp. “And don’t be dumb, if I was that old I wouldn’t be _ here_.”

Smart girl. Hongjoong gives her another soft squeeze before standing back up, knees creaking from the cold outside and his supreme lack of exercise. He sends a brief text to his father to let him know he’s in building before pocketing his phone and letting the girls lead him to the pile of bean bags and short chairs provided by the hospital.

His father finds him less than an hour later with the two girls asleep with their heads on either side of his lap. Up close like this Hongjoong can count the stitches all around Yeseul’s hairline, over the crown and down, a roadmap of pain she’s dealt with since coming to the hospital last year. Hyojung has already snapped multiple pictures and dragged numerous staff over to coo over the pile of them in the play room.

“You look cozy,” his father whispers with a tired grin, the lines around his mouth and his eyes deepening. 

“They got too excited,” Hongjoong says. It takes some finagling, but together they manage to get the girls off of his legs and new pillows placed below them. “Save anyone today?”

His father sighs, rubbing tiredly at his eyes beneath the black frame of his glasses. “I tried. That’s all we can really strive for some days. Too many losses and not enough victories.”

“I’m sorry, dad,” Hongjoong offers and means it. Being a surgeon is equal amount cascading triumphs and the constant blow of defeat. “You do the best you can.”

“I do,” he agrees, then, “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.” Hyojung waves them goodbye from her station as they descend once again to the elevator. “What brings you by today? I thought you had exams you need to study for or have they changed the curriculum again?”

Hongjoong fidgets nervously with the strap of his bag. “I—have you seen the news lately?”

“The news? Did something happen?” His father’s mouth pinches inward. “Has your mother debuted another book I didn’t hear about? She’s supposed to tell me these things, I can’t drop everything here at work to join her in a signing—”

“No, no, nothing to do with her,” Hongjoong stops him before he can get too far. “It’s just—I,” he swallows, “I had a run in with—with my soulmate, dad. They’re in Seoul.”

“Oh.” It’s a dull blurt of surprise. “And, ah, who are…they?”

Hongjoong knows what he’s really asking. Who is it and are they male? Are they the same kind of male that Wooyoung was when they were caught making out in his room years ago as an experiment? Is his son going to continue being a disappointment? Hongjoong clenches his teeth against the bitterness hanging at the end of his tongue.

“I don’t know who it is,” he finally says when the elevator dings to announce their arrival to the bottom floor. “But I fell over from it and the paps saw me. My name trended on Naver for a full two days because of it.”

His father leads them outside into the brisk December morning, exhalations turning into dense clouds of fog instantly. 

“I see.” His father digs around in his scrub bottoms for a lighter and a pack of cigarettes a heart surgeon really had no business owning. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Hongjoong tells him. “Since when do you smoke?” He asks when his father cups his hand around the flickering flame until the tobacco smolders. 

“Since none of your business and don’t tell your mother,” he sighs out, smoke floating from his nostrils on an exhale. 

Hongjoong stands with him until his dad is half-way down to the filter. “Kind of ironic a doctor who deals with the heart on a daily basis is out here ruining his organs with poison sticks.”

His father laughs, stubbing the remainder of the cigarette against one of the decorative concrete pillars. “This might come as a shock to you, Hongjoong-ah,” he claps a hand against Hongjoong’s shoulder on his way back into the building, “But not everyone practices what they preach.”

The pager on his belt beeps urgently and his father leaves Hongjoong standing there in the cold, fingers numb where they grip the strap of his bag tight—too tight and the material is starting to dig blisters against his palms—and throat clogged with everything he wishes he had said instead.

_ Wait_, he cries out in the darkest recesses of his mind._ Please come home. Please help me with mom, I can’t deal with her anymore. _

Hongjoong takes the train back towards the university for his study group covering his belly the entire way. _ Wait_. He remembers that word all too well. _ Wait_, his soulmate yelled at him from the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop.

_ I’m sorry_, he sends into the ether as the station rolls into view, _ I can’t wait, not for you_.

**\--------------**

**woo ** [6:07 PM]  
i take it back ):<<<

**honkhonk** [6:12 PM]  
??????????????  
take what back

**woo **[6:12 PM]  
i’m not in love and that guy was  
THE WORST  
THE LITERAL WORST  
-1000000000000000/10

**honkhonk ** [6:45 PM]  
what did he do

**woo ** [6:46 PM]  
found his soulmate while we were on  
the way to the cinema  
and like  
he wouldn’t even buy my ticket/snacks???  
fucking R U D E  
the universe is a COCKBLOCKER

**honkhonk** [7:21 PM]  
i’m studying but you’re welcome to come over to pout

**woo** [7:23 PM]  
mom gone?

**honkhonk ** [7:30 PM]  
overnight junket in jeju we’re safe

**woo ** [7:35 PM]  
OMW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
i’ll bring you chips bc ily

**honkhonk** [7:53 PM]  
k  
just dont eat them this time?

**woo** [8:10 PM]  
……...no promises

**honkhonk ** [8:12 PM]  
you already ate them didn’t you

**\--------------**

It’s just his fucking rotten luck that the soulmate he’s so hellbent on avoiding ends up spending most of their—his?—time in the same sort of orbital space as Hongjoong’s daily route to and from the university and home. Hongjoong spends more time trying to find avenues where the twinging pull behind his navel is less angry than he does actually going to end of term classes. Even his study group notices a difference when Hongjoong runs late waiting for his soulmate to stop wandering so close to the campus library.

“Hongjoong-ssi, is everything alright?” Jung Garam asks while he slides a coffee drink across their shared table space. “You’ve been looking extra pale and showing up later than usual.”

Hongjoong accepts the drink with a grateful smile. “Sorry. It’s been a madhouse at my place lately. Getting out has been a little bit of a struggle.”

Seungho and Minsi, soulmates who found each other when they were young and subsequently agreed to keep it platonic, glance up from their own hefty textbooks to offer sympathetic furrowed eyebrows. 

“It must be really strange to see your name trending on Naver just for going to get groceries or the sauna,” Minsi quietly adds and taps her shoe against his in a show of solidarity. 

Hongjoong shrugs, uncomfortable with the direction this conversation is going. He’s been trying not to let what’s trending online affect him. Or to even look at it, really, since most of what’s showing up under his name is speculative garbage, especially with the way someone is claiming his soulmate is some no name daughter of a local politician.

“Let’s just focus on the last round of exams, yeah?” Hongjoong pulls out his own voluminous notebook and worksheets to focus on. “Only one more to go.”

“Fighting!” The three all cheer in low voices so as not to disturb the rest of the room cramming for their own course loads. Thirty minutes into the session, Garam discreetly sends him a text:

**J.Garam** [12:56 PM]  
seungho wants your #  
ok to send it to him?

Hongjoong chews at the inside of his cheek and briefly flicks his gaze to Seungho bent dutifully over his laptop checking his answers on a practice exam with a paling frown. He’s bulky from years of lifting heavy shipping boxes as a side job while putting himself through college. For someone so huge, he’s horrifically shy, it had taken Hongjoong three months of sharing classes before Seungho even mumbled so much as a ‘hello’. 

Hongjoong considers Seungho's thick palms, the calluses on his fingers, and the black outline of a closed lily rooted between his knuckles.

**K.Hongjoong** [1:12 PM]  
that’s fine

It’s only when he’s on the train headed home, hours later and the sky outside bleeding from orange to pink to deep navy that he thinks to check to see if anyone else has tried to contact him. There a three missed calls from his mother, six texts from Wooyoung, and a single text from a new, unfamiliar number.

**+82 02-XXXX-XXXXX ** [2:45 PM]  
:)

He stares at it for longer than is probably necessary before saving it under Seungho❤️? and closes his eyes to ignore the whispering passengers sitting in front of him. There’s a hard tug in his stomach trying to shove him through the train and to the left. He ignores that, too.

**\--------------**

Somehow, despite having to dodge photogs and the constant physical yanking distracting him from studies, Hongjoong manages to pass his exams with a high enough score to pass into his next, and final, semester. Only one more to go before the possibility of sweet, sweet freedom from his shared space with his mother and finally branching out into the real world—and maybe then he won’t be turned away because of employers unwilling to cope with his celebrity status. 

Under the guise of going out for celebratory drinks, he takes Seungho on a date to eat barbecue and slam shitty weak beer. It’s...nice. Safe. Seungho is still relatively quiet, but he’s attentive and does his best to keep Hongjoong’s nervous tipsy chatter going with deliberate ‘ah’s’ and equally nervous, “What’s it like to speak at those huge charity events?” 

“You know those nightmares where you’re really late for something and you can’t figure out what it _ is_ until suddenly you’re standing naked in the middle of a giant enclosure at the zoo being gawked at by tourists?” Hongjoong slams his empty beer glass down against their table. “Like that.”

Seungho blinks. “That’s...not good?”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong says earnestly. He has to grab hold of the edge of his seat when his body tries to lurch forward of its own volition. “It’s the worst.” Seungho hums good naturedly, folding and flattening his napkin to give his hands something to do. Over his shoulder, Hongjoong can just make out the movement of a blond head craning around the bar area and ducks down, pulling his face mask back over his mouth. “Want to get out of here?”

“Oh! Ah,” Seungho hesitates and crunches the napkin in a loose fist. “Okay.”

Seungho drives him home, shakes his head when Hongjoong offers to pay for his gas, and leans over the center console with his face beet red to say with intensity, “I _ really _ like you, Hongjoong-hyung. Please tell me we can do this again?”

Hongjoong curls a hand into the material of his sweater as an anchor against the barely there pull trying to divert his attention east. Away from the car. Away from Seungho. “Sure,” he says, “I’ll—I’ll text you when I’m free again.”

**\--------------**

It all comes to a head the week leading into Christmas when Wooyoung calls him in a panic.

“Hyung, he’s here. He’s _ here_,” Wooyoung whisper shouts over their connection, “He’s _ back _ and he’s in Seoul.”

Hongjoong yawns bleary-eyed and exhausted from a late night session with his laptop and his music program, indents from his headphones still aching slightly against his temples, and notes that no reasonable human being should be expected to be coherent at only seven in the morning. “Who’s here? Did Park Jimin come back from tour or something?”

“No,” Wooyoung says harshly and is very clearly not in a joking mood. “My _ soulmate_. He’s back in Korea and I can actually _ feel _ him again.”

Hongjoong finally wakes up enough to parse the conversation. He sits upright in his bed, only barely catching his laptop from careening off the edge with a muffled yelp. “Shit!” Wooyoung makes a questioning noise. “Nothing, don’t worry about it. What are you going to do?”

Wooyoung blows out a breath. “I—I don’t know. Part of me wants to find him, but…”

“It’s scary,” Hongjoong agrees softly. “How do you know it’s a guy, anyway? I thought you didn’t know who it was.”

“It’s _ so _ fucking scary I want to _ die_,” Wooyoung whines agreement. “And you wouldn’t understand, hyung. It’s just this...feeling in my guts telling me he’s a _ he _ and is close enough I could probably see him if I looked.” Wooyoung sniffs dangerously. “Help me find him. I’m—I can’t do this without your support.”

Hongjoong scrubs a hand down his face with a tired sigh. “What happened to the confident gay that can go through tinder dates like he’s changing his shoes?”

“Dead and gone now his soulmate is in the same hemisphere again.” The line goes silent for a beat. “Please,” Wooyoung finally begs, “You’re my best friend. I literally cannot do this without you.”

Hongjoong lets his body fall backwards into the inviting softness of his mattress and his collection of pillows. “Never said I wouldn’t, Wooyoung. Just text me the when and where and I’ll be with you.” Wooyoung cheers, though snotty from his emotional state, and Hongjoong can’t help but to smile at the sound. “And quit crying,” he adds.

“Fuck you,” Wooyoung cheerfully informs him and hangs up. Hongjoong rolls his eyes and goes back to sleep.

**\--------------**

After trawling through multiple neighborhoods and riding between Itaewon and Gangnam _ twice_, they decide to take a break at a small Italian bistro for lunch.

“So, you can feel him but you can’t actually pinpoint where he’s at?” Hongjoong asks.

Wooyoung shakes his head with a breadstick hanging out of his mouth. He breaks off a piece and, around a mouthful of garlic and yeast, “No, I can tell he’s close but I can’t tell you, like, hey he’s at the McDonald’s or he’s in the convenience store across the street.” The remaining half of the breadstick is violently ripped apart as Wooyoung scowls. “It’s frustrating.”

Hongjoong twirls his last forkful of fettuccine. It seems mighty useless to have a connection to someone like that and not be able to actually find them when you need them. At least he doesn’t have that niggling awareness to deal with himself, not unless he gives in and touches his soulmate to finalize the link.

His phone starts to buzz with a call from his mom. Hongjoong scowls at it and turns the offending machine off.

“Well, maybe you can take solace in the fact he’s probably feeling the same way about finding you,” Hongjoong tries in a bid to cheer Wooyoung up.

“Maybe.” His friend wilts until he can rest his chin against the table. Old habits. “This would go so much faster if you had just taken the car.”

Hongjoong decides against the last bite of his pasta and shoves his plate away. “You know I can’t.”

“Right.” Wooyoung winces, then, “Sorry, I keep forgetting.” Hongjoong can only shrug in reply. He wishes he could burn away that particular memory too. “Have you decided if you’re going to go through with trying to find your soulmate or not? I doubt the wicked witch is going to let you off the hook any time soon.”

“More like not,” Hongjoong mutters. His stomach roils at the thought of going public, of letting his mother stand in charge of his potentially-potential relationship—one she’d disapprove of anyway considering Hongjoong is fairly certain his soulmate a man anyway. It's an age old argument he’ll only win when his parents are long gone or he finally gets fed up with the hypocrisy and severs ties.

They leave the restaurant. Instead of continuing the fruitless search, Wooyoung offers to buy him at least three overpriced snacks if Hongjoong will just sit through a vomit inducing feel-good family movie centered around Christmas that had just been released. Ordinarily Hongjoong would refuse, but Wooyoung owes him, like, multiple snacks by this point. He might as well enjoy an hour and a half long nap if it means he gets an oversized bucket of buttery popcorn and two bags of sour skittles in exchange

**\--------------**

They don’t make the movie.

**\--------------**

Wooyoung is oddly silent the closer they get to the venue, deep furrows between his eyebrows as he scans the crowd around them. 

“Oh,” Wooyoung stops, pulling Hongjoong to stand beside him by his arm, and points to the other side of the crosswalk. “That’s—”

Hongjoong sees a young man around their age hold his hand up in the air to wave at someone coming in a different direction. As if in slow motion, Hongjoong watches the man’s sleeve dip down just enough to reveal the deep brown splatter mark he’s seen a thousand times on Wooyoung’s skin. Wooyoung inhales deep, low whine in his throat, and grips tight to Hongjoong’s shirt sleeve. “Oh god, I am so not ready for this. Who thought this was a good idea? Not me, that’s for damn sure.” 

Hongjoong should tell Wooyoung to nut up or shut up, except…

A familiar head of bleach blond hair, dark roots starting to show at the crown, is jogging down the opposite sidewalk waving back to Wooyoung’s soulmate. The jerking sensation is back, more forceful this time—like it’s trying to shuffle Hongjoong forward by sheer force of will.

His magnetic north. His soulmate. Right there. Right _h__ere_.

“Hyung,” Wooyoung whispers. The two men ahead haven’t taken notice of Wooyoung and himself standing like idiots blocking the flow of pedestrian traffic on the other side of the street yet, for which Hongjoong is intensely grateful. “Hyung that’s him. Pinch me.”

“Yeah.” Hongjoong can feel the terrified tremors start in his fingertips. “It is.”

Wooyoung doesn’t move, rooted in place by indecision. “Should I—I should say something, right? Like, that’s something I should be doing right now.”

“Yeah,” he repeats like a broken record.

“Hongjoong?” Wooyoung nudges him with an elbow. “Are you alright? You’re sweating.”

He hasn’t stopped staring at the young man, possibly his own age, whose eyes are widening while he recovers from stumbling forward into Wooyoung’s soulmate, and looking around like he’s searching for something—someone. Hongjoong can’t think, his mind going blank aside from a numbing buzz like radio static or a faulty tv connection. Instinct takes over the second they make eye contact—electrified even over the distance of a crowded sidewalk and a traffic light—

Hongjoong bolts.

He can’t hear anything but the blood in his veins, the wind against his ears, the pounding of his feet on the concrete. Hongjoong only vaguely registers yelling as the crowd parts around him until he can duck into an alleyway and pant into his knees. 

He can’t do this, he can’t do this, _ he can’t do this_.

“Please stop running away from me,” he hears his soulmate calling at him, breathless, from the entrance to the side alley, before noticing a slight shift to his jacket when the man reaches forward. “My name is Jeong Yunho. Sorry to bother you, but I think you’re my soulmate.”

Even over his jacket, Hongjoong can feel the first burning lance of their bond trying to form. “Please,” he begs and tries to wrench himself out of Yunho’s grip before they can truly connect, “_please _ don’t touch me.”

The hand drops listlessly away as Hongjoong finally looks back and takes in the devastated ruin of Yunho’s face, shock etched into every attractive inch—and isn’t that a fucking shame. No one _ that _ handsome had any business being bonded to someone as fucked up as himself. 

Hongjoong has to grip tight to the jagged brickwork of the closest building to keep from sliding forward and destroying his chances at personal freedom. The rock bites into his skin, but his grip is firm—steady—and even though his hand drips crimson lines almost to his wrist, his feet do not move.

Like all the best romance movies, it begins to rain.

**\--------------**

One voicemail, left at 1:27PM.

_ “Hongjoong-ah,” his mother’s voice simpers at him over the receiver, though with an audible hard edge. “I know you’ve got your phone turned off for some reason, but you need to call me back as soon as you listen to this. We need to discuss the business with your soulmate and start making plans for them. _ _ Now. _ _ Or I will do it for you. Make your choice.” _


	2. Dreaming Signore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please please please be kind to yourself and make note of the new tags
> 
> dubcon: pre-established past!woojoong get drunk at one point and hongjoong offers himself up on a platter maybe a little too temptingly. it's not explicitly coerced but it's a near thing and up to you to decide if you're comfortable reading through.

_ ….There’s a loud booming sound of metal scraping against metal. It’s dark and the car isn’t moving anymore. Weren’t they going to a fancy meeting somewhere? Dad...dad was going to meet them at the—the place. Hotel. He remembers now because he’d asked to stay in the lobby with the nice doorman and the big Christmas tree with all the lights. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ His body hurts in the spaces where the seatbelt has tightened, mostly his chest and his neck. His ears are ringing. He can smell gasoline. Someone is screaming. _

_ A boy? _

_ Oh… _

**\--------------**

Hongjoong wakes up in a cold sweat and barely makes it from his bed to the small bathroom across the hall to retch into the toilet. 

He’s revisited the memory countless times since the accident over a decade ago and sometimes he can still imagine the acrid stench of burning vehicle and gore from the wreck on the side of the highway. People _ died _ that night. His mother had been so cavalier about the whole thing, Hongjoong has to wonder if she’s even human—if somewhere beneath the gold and glitz of hallyu fame is an actual woman with feelings that include empathy. By her track record, all signs point to no.

Hongjoong loses a small stretch of time staring at the tiled floor of his bathroom waiting for his throat to stop burning from the stomach acid and for the hellish dreamscape to finally dissipate back to formless shapes. He can hear his phone start to buzz with text notifications from here. Hongjoong groans, rising from the floor to rinse his mouth with water from the tap, and goes back to bed.

‘_Where did you go???_’ is the first unread message he scrolls upward to find, followed by a tidal wave of increasingly concerned, ‘_H__ongjoong??? Buddy what’s wrong talk to me_’ and ‘_please tell me you’re alright yeosang and seonghwa haven’t seen you in days_’ that make him feel guilty just to read. He continues to ignore them, though. His stomach still aches with vicious stings trying to pull him in a direction he refuses to search and hearing Wooyoung gush about finding his soulmate again will just make it worse.

‘_Sorry_,’ he types out when the guilt starts to gnaw. ‘_Something came up_.’

Wooyoung immediately calls him. Hongjoong hesitates before picking up on the third ring. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself, I thought you’d _ died _and the paps just forgot to write up your obituary,” Wooyoung cries at him over the receiver. “Fuck man, you took off running and disappeared for almost a week. What’s wrong with you?”

“Just—I had something I needed to take care of and it took a while,” Hongjoong mutters. He thumbs over a pulled thread in his coverlet to give himself something to fixate on besides this conversation. “I’m sorry for not responding sooner.”

Wooyoung is silent for almost thirty seconds. “Stop apologizing, it feels like I’m talking to a robot instead of my best friend.” Wooyoung sighs. “Does this...look, I wasn’t going to pry, but does this have anything to do with the dude Dispatch is claiming as your soulmate? Because I know being outed to the public—”

“Wait.” Hongjoong bolts upright with the blankets fisted tight in his grasp. “What guy?”

“I don’t know, some tall dude with a vine going up his arm.” Wooyoung says a little defensively. “Look, can we meet up?”

“What dude, Wooyoung,” Hongjoong hisses instead of answering, “This is important.”

“One of San’s friends, alright? Jesus, I don’t know any of them from Adam but he’s tall and apparently really nice so you could do worse.” Wooyoung bites back but his voice is wavering like he’s on the verge of tears. 

That gives Hongjoong pause. “Who is ‘San’?”  
  
“Can we please just meet up? I know your place is out because the Wicked Witch is around but I need your advice. Seonghwa and Yeosang can only do so much, I _ need _ you.” He can tell Wooyoung is getting actually honest-to-god upset by the increasing desperation and wonders if he’s missed something important aside from the reconnection of souls. Something life-changing. “Please, Hongjoong.”

He could say no. He could tell Wooyoung he needs more time alone to mope and to panic google whoever it is the media is claiming as his soulmate...because they might be right. Yunho is tall. Yunho is nice, nicer than Hongjoong deserves and he hopes the man can find someone else to be connected to who appreciates that in a partner. The vine comment is a little—that part is impossible. They didn’t connect skin-to-skin so the mark shouldn’t have been able to manifest on either of them much less to have an entire vine climbing up Yunho’s arm. 

He swallows down another stinging throat full of bile. 

If the media is starting to claim his soulmate as someone male then...then it’s only a matter of time before his parents catch wind of it. He’s been careful, so _ careful_, to keep that part of himself hidden after the disaster of being found making out with Wooyoung that one time that he can’t even begin to imagine what the punishment would be this time. More invasion of his privacy, his mother making good on her threat to remove the doors in the house so he can’t hide behind them probably.

His father had already cut him off financially before and only deigned to give him a small stipend when Hongjoong was continually turned away from jobs just because his celebrity status made it awkward for employers. His mother still goes over the bank statements with a fine toothed comb every month so she can find a reason to chew him out for spending pennies on anything other than food or transport. At his age he should be enjoying his youth, he should be out partying and spending his paychecks (that he wishes he had) on stupid shit instead of ferreting away everything he can pull out of the bank and hide so he has enough to fall back on for a place to stay when his tenuous family situation finally boils over. 

The thought of the media decoding his soul connection as someone male has him nervous and his fingers quaking. Even being a thing of circumstance and involuntary twists of fate, gay soul connections were still considered somewhat taboo, worse when it comes to someone in the public eye. Celebrities have died for less.

“You still there?” Wooyoung questions after who knows how long of Hongjoong spacing out. “Hongjoong?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m still here.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Where and when?”

**\--------------**

The where happens to be the same coffee shop slash bookstore Hongjoong had almost run into his soulmate once before and the when a scant one hour window after Wooyoung had hung up the phone. Hongjoong waits upstairs in a secluded corner with two drinks and a giant book he’d pulled down to hide behind. Up here he’s away from the windows and the _ three _ paps who’d been standing outside his building and trailed him however many blocks away this is. Hongjoong can’t remember, too busy panicking at the cascading avalanche of information he finds on Naver about his soulmate.

_ Yunho_.

Two sources confirm his name. One claims he’s the son of doctor and another says he’s a destitute college student like Hongjoong himself with family overseas. Hongjoong finds no less than six different threads on as many online forums all discussing who this guy may be, why he has markings twisting up his arm, and why hadn’t Hongjoong’s PR team addressed the rumors.

Hongjoong has to close all of them out and squeeze his eyes shut when multiple anonymous posters start gushing about the love story of his parents and how _ romantic _ it must be to find your soulmate is actually the son of major celebrities. How cool. How excited his mother must be and wondering if it will be the story that sails another multi-year marketing campaign of movies and radio shows and action figure tie-ins.   
  
The commodification of something he hates so vehemently makes him _ sick_.

Wooyoung drops into the seat in front of him with a winded, “Hey”, before he’s dropping his forehead to the table on a giant sigh. “I feel like I need to fistfight someone and I don’t know if it’s you or me.”

“Well, that sounds a bit dire,” Hongjoong half laughs and nudges Wooyoung’s feet beneath the table with the edge of his shoes. “Tell me what’s so wrong that you needed to see me so early.”

“It’s passed noon,” Wooyoung says tartly against the grain of the wood. 

“Wooyoung.”

“Fine,” his friend breathes deep before he’s lifting his head and frowning so hard the skin of his cheeks dimples. “I met my soulmate again. Which you would know if you had bothered to stick around.”

Hongjoong winces. “Sorry—”

Wooyoung continues over him, “And it’s...he’s not really...something is off about us. I don’t know what it is, but something isn’t connecting.” Hongjoong watches Wooyoung scrape his hands down his face and finally takes notice of the way his friend’s skin in sallow in places, how the stubble Wooyoung is usually so meticulous about keeping waxed is long enough to create deep shadows on his chin and upper lip. “He’s nice—San, I mean—but when we touched there wasn’t...usually there’s supposed to be a spark, right? Everyone says so, even soulmates who have been together for decades says there’s always a spark but we have _ nothing_.”

“That’s doesn’t seem possible.” Hongjoong reaches over to tug Wooyoung’s hands away from worrying at his bottom lip where the skin is dry and cracking but Wooyoung just flinches away from the contact. 

“You wouldn’t understand with how you’re already falling all over the place with your soulmate,” Wooyoung spits. Hongjoong waits him out knowing this is all just him lashing out at the world for continuing to be unfair. “Sorry, I didn’t call you out here to be a huge bitch about it, I just—hyung, I thought we’d find each other and everything would lock into place. I thought we’d have this grand sweeping romance and live happily ever after.”

Hongjoong gets up and slides into the chair next to Wooyoung to tug him into his chest while Wooyoung tries to inhale heaping lungfuls of air like they’re going to keep him from sobbing in the middle of this awkward bookstore. “Tell me exactly what happened, Woo. I can’t help if I don’t have the whole story.”

Wooyoung buries his head against Hongjoong’s neck. “After you left and that guy San was meeting ran off too, I introduced myself. You know the usual, ‘hi we’re soulmates, how about _ that _ huh?’ and San just smiled at me. Like, he shook my hand and told me his name, but other than that he said it was nice to meet me again.” Wooyoung stiffens. “It was nice to meet me again! Like, am I the only one who can appreciate this life-changing moment here? We’re _ soulmates_.”

Hongjoong soothes a hand down Wooyoung’s back. It sounds like San might be operating under the same assumption that Hongjoong holds that soulmates aren’t inherently required to be enthusiastic about the connection. Maybe San has someone waiting for him back home and doesn’t want to get Wooyoung’s hopes up. Maybe San is just not interested. Maybe San doesn’t _ want to be_.

Before Hongjoong says any of this though, Wooyoung sniffs dangerously and mutters, “Our marks didn’t even do anything. They’re supposed to tingle when you touch but it’s like something misfired and we got a bunch of fucking nothing.”

“Are you sure you’ve got the right person?” Hongjoong questions.

Wooyoung nods. “I’m sure. One hundred percent, San is my soulmate. I can’t really describe how I know, it’s just a—”

“A feeling.” Hongjoong finishes for him before he’s propping his chin on Wooyoung’s head and letting out a small hum of deep thought. “You have matching marks, right?”

“Mirror images.” Wooyoung wipes his nose on the edge of Hongjoong’s sweater that he benevolently decides to let slide. “Like a Rorschach splotch.”

Hongjoong mulls that over. “You know,” he starts carefully, “I’ve never met anyone with a soul connection where the marks are the same.”

Wooyoung lets out a weak bark of laughter. “Yeah. We’re like two sides of the same coin only there’re two heads instead of one.” His friend threads his fingers through the holes in Hongjoong’s jeans out of habit. “Sorry for venting at you. You’re the only one that makes me feel better and you don’t even _ try_.”

Hongjoong secrets a kiss against Wooyoung’s forehead. “That happens sometimes when you’ve seen each other’s dick enough.”

“Don’t try to ruin the moment by being crude,” Wooyoung whines and bites at his chest, though Hongjoong pulled on two layers of sweaters before he left so Wooyoung only manages to get a mouthful of cotton and polyester. “Tell me where you went that day, I need a distraction.”

The memory, when it hits, reminds Hongjoong of just how much of a useless piece of shit he really is.  
  
There’s a tug deep in his gut that can only mean Yunho actually _ does _ work here and is probably about to make his grand entrance into his life. Again. Hongjoong breathes in tight against the swell of his instinct to flee and keeps himself rooted in the chair while Wooyoung continues to lean his head under his chin like a cat and ask quiet questions about the validity of Dispatch's claims. Ordinarily, Hongjoong would listen but the tug is getting deeper—a string being pulled taut and ready to snap—and Hongjoong can hear nothing but the rush of adrenaline making his blood pound in quick pulses.

**\--------------**

They find shelter beneath an awning overhanging the backdoor of whatever buildings they’re standing between to wait out the sudden downpour. Hongjoong doesn’t say anything as he holds his hand out in an attempt to rinse the worst of the blood away, maybe clean out some of the grit that had crumbled against his hand before it digs too deep. Next to him, Yunho—his soulmate, fuck—fidgets in place. He can feel their invisible tether draw tight and uses every ounce of willpower not to let it shift him any closer to the man. Yunho is polite enough to do the same.

Over the steady drip-drip-drip of the rain against the metal overhang, Yunho asks, “Is there a reason you don’t want to—I mean, I know everyone has boundaries, and I respect that, but...I’ve been waiting a long time to find you.” Hongjoong winces. “Any excuse would be preferable to not knowing.”

Hongjoong slouches into himself, fingers cold and numb from the frigid weather, and shakes his head careful not to dislodge his face mask keeping him concealed. “I think it would be best for both of us if you just pretend this never happened.” He digs his heels into the slick gravel beneath their feet. “Look, dude—”

“Yunho.”

“Right, yeah.” Hongjoong continues to avoid looking at him. “This isn’t really about you, specifically, but I really cannot touch you without literally ruining my life.” Yunho makes a sound. A sad one. One Hongjoong has heard many times in the quiet of his own room when he counts the cash in his hollowed out books and looks up the devastating cost of room and board. “For what it’s worth, I—didn’t really want to believe you existed until I was old and grey.” He smiles a little ruefully down at the scuffed leather of his shoes. “Maybe not even then. I’m sorry.”

Yunho sniffs. Wet. “At least give me your name. If we’re never going to be anything more than a possibility, you owe me at least that much.”

He inhales.

Hongjoong could run away now. He could sprint off from this very alley into the slackening rain and disappear forever if he really wanted. But...

He exhales. 

But Yunho is here, unfortunate though it may be, and the guy deserves at least this much to go on so he’s not left in the lurch, fumbling for his soul connection’s namesake and wondering who it was he’d met. Hongjoong shakily tugs his mask down until it snags under his chin and turns to face the music.

“I’m Kim Hongjoong,” he says, and tries not to feel as sick as he does when Yunho’s eyes widen almost comically in recognition. “Sorry about all this. Again.”

“Oh.” Yunho’s face is attractive, unfairly so, and the apples of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose pink in the chill air. He's got an indentation on his cheek that looks like an old scar that never healed over properly. In any other circumstance, in another life maybe, Hongjoong would more than likely be falling all over himself—regardless of any soul connection—trying to win his attention. Damn. 

Yunho gapes his mouth open and closed for a long stretch of time before he’s continuing, “I’ve watched all of your mom’s movies. They were my favorites growing up.”

And instantly Yunho is the most hideous creature Hongjoong has ever had the displeasure of meeting. Any feelings of doubt about his choice not to touch, any flighty thoughts about the man’s attractiveness curdle into the dark black of horrified distaste and hatred. 

“Wow, how fun that must have been for you,” Hongjoong seethes. The rain has slackened enough he feels like he could walk through it again. “Good talk. I’m leaving now, have a nice life!”

“Wait!” Yunho calls after him when Hongjoong tries to neatly sidestep around and away. “Can I get your number?”

“No,” Hongjoong replies while his stomach flops from the intense pull trying to shove him back into Yunho’s personal bubble. “Bye, Yunho.”

He doesn’t look back to see Yunho’s expression. He doesn’t want to.

His phone continues to buzz until he breaks open the back casing and removes the battery in a fit of rage.

**\--------------**

He can hear the creak of the stairsteps now and wonders if Yunho already knows he’s here. More than likely he _ has _ considering Hongjoong feels as if someone is trying to shove him backwards out of his chair by forceful pushes behind his navel. He can only hope Yunho has a better handle on the tug and isn’t about to go crashing down a flight of stairs and break a leg or something. Behind him, he hears the unmistakable sound of glasses clinking together thanks to unsteady hands and winces.

Oddly enough, his back begins to itch.

Wooyoung doesn’t notice his discomfort or if he does then he’s kind enough not to verbalize it and quietly waits for Hongjoong to start talking. The tug gets stronger with every heel-toe clack of Yunho’s shoes on the wood flooring and Hongjoong has to grab hold of the edge of the table in fear he’s about to fall backwards.

“Your drinks,” Yunho says stiffly, still somewhat hidden from view and Wooyoung perks up at the promise of caffeine. Hongjoong stares resolutely forward. He can’t even begin to imagine making eye contact with his—with Yunho. Not right now. Not _ so soon_.

Wooyoung lets out a cheer when he’s handed a peppermint mocha like he doesn’t buy them five days during the week and twice on Sundays. Hongjoong admires the slender hand shakily placing his hot chocolate on a napkin in front of him and doesn’t breathe. 

Curling along Yunho’s ring finger is a black vine like something out of a picture book of the jungle or some fantastical forest scene. There’s a closed fern surrounding the first knuckle. Hongjoong can count three minuscule thorns working their way beneath the sleeve of Yunho’s work uniform.

“You have a mark,” Hongjoong throatily whispers under his breath. “_How _do you have a mark?”

Wooyoung smacks him in the arm. “Dude, that’s so rude. You know you’re not supposed to comment on people’s marks.”

Hongjoong ignores him and finally looks at Yunho properly. His eyebags are deep and red, bruised like he’s been rubbing them too much, and his skin is a touch paler than Hongjoong remembers. Because the universe hates him, Yunho continues to be a solid twelve out of ten in spite of his obvious exhaustion. 

Yunho shakes his head. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.” He stands straight with his drink tray held against his stomach as if the physical barrier will somehow make the incessant invisible yanking stop. “Nice to see you again by the way.”

Hongjoong nods. For the first time his mind is horrendously blank. He knows he should be having some kind of emotional crisis at seeing his soulm—Yunho again, much less at the fact Yunho has a mark winding up the arm that barely touched his jacket last week, but all his brain seems to want him to focus on is the pink flush high in Yunho’s cheeks and the way Yunho’s fingers fidget around his tray.

“Wait, again?” Wooyoung jabs him with his elbow. “‘Joong?”

“Y-yeah,” Hongjoong fumbles, “It’s—um—it’s definitely—”

“Oh my god! Are you the soulmate?” Wooyoung interrupts with a gasp before he’s bouncing to his heels and grabbing at Yunho’s sleeve in an effort to push it back for a better eyeful of whatever is going on with Yunho’s soulmark. “San’s friend, right? You have to tell me _ everything _ because Hongjoong here refuses to feed me details about anything ever. It’s the _ worst_.”

“Really the worst,” Yunho agrees and spears Hongjoong with a pointed look. Hongjoong has sense enough to look away, cowed. Yunho extracts Wooyoung’s fingers from his sleeve gently. “Sorry, I have to get back to work so maybe another time. Enjoy your drinks and have a pleasant evening.”

Yunho leaves back down the steps. Heel-toe, heel-toe, a stolid march Hongjoong knows is requiring intense effort not to give in and come running back. Hongjoong digs his nails into his palms as a distraction from wanting to follow.

“Well, that was strange.” Wooyoung slowly sits back down. He grabs Hongjoong’s chin. “Talk.”

“I will later.” Hongjoong jerks his chin out from Wooyoung’s grip. “Not now though. Too many eyes and ears.”

“You’re too paranoid,” Wooyoung tells him but benevolently drops the subject in favor of describing the next set of shows his dance troupe are attempting to win.

**\--------------**

Hongjoong escapes the cafe to the relative safety of Seonghwa and Yeosang’s apartment only a short bus ride to the college away and then a brisk walk down two blocks. Hongjoong always enjoys the walk up to the building because Seonghwa and Yeosang take pride in their pride, flags of all orientations flung over the balcony in a fearless display. He wishes he was brave enough to even think about purchasing a pride flag, much less have one prominently pinned up in his space as if it wouldn’t have the media—and his parents—absolutely frothing at the mouth.

He carefully adjusts the mask over his nose and tugs the baseball cap he’s thrown on as a disguise into place and, discreetly, glances around to make sure no paparazzi hopeful has trailed him to this place. His safe haven.

“Hongjoong-ie!” Seonghwa greets him enthusiastically at the door and pulls Hongjoong in for a kiss on the cheek. “Excellent timing, we were just about to light up.”

“You’re always ten seconds away from rolling a blunt, that’s not really new information,” Hongjoong sighs at him. Seonghwa only shrugs with a grin, completely unrepentant, before leading him into their cozy living room where Yeosang is sitting on their frumpy grandma couch and has already laid out his supplies on their sad rickety coffee table, fighting with their ancient grinder. “Need some help, ‘Sang-ah?”

“Nah,” Yeosang grunts still struggling with the lid. “This thing is just being a bitch, I’ll get it in a second.” Hongjoong takes it from him, adjusts the lid back into alignment, and passes it back to Yeosang who looks like he’s been passed a burnt lemon. “I loosened that for you.”

“Whatever makes you feel secure in your masculinity,” Hongjoong coos and tickles his fingers beneath Yeosang’s chin. Yeosang just ducks down to gently bite against Hongjoong’s fingers and then delicately licks away the sting. Hongjoong wipes the spit off on Yeosang’s beanie.

Their apartment is small but homey. Hongjoong has only ever known cold unfeeling modernist takes on home decor while Seonghwa and Yeosang like to embrace barely contained chaos of stuff they’ve collected from thrift shops and side alley bargain sales. One wall of their living room is dedicated to framed pictures of multicolored landscapes and rugs pinned to the drywall. They have a corner stacked with blankets and throws and bolts of fabric Seonghwa likes to repurpose as lap quilts for his office at the college as welcoming presents to new students who need something to do with their hands when they talk. Yeosang has a shelf stacked with skateboard planks, a bin full of wheels, and a corkboard of every recipe he’s found he can add food coloring to for GSA events. 

Seonghwa takes the first hit and pinches Hongjoong’s chin between his long sturdy fingers so Hongjoong will open his mouth and accept the heady burn of smoke when Seonghwa exhales. 

“You look like you’ve seen hell,” Seonghwa whispers hoarse against Hongjoong’s throat. Yeosang is sprawled out in the middle of the floor next to them with his own bowl scrolling through something on his phone. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.” Hongjoong closes his eyes and accepts the blunt Seonghwa holds to his lips with a deep breath. They always share because Hongjoong is always, always, _ always _ a lightweight. “Rather scoop my brain out through my nasal cavity than even think about the last month I’ve had.”

“No lobotomy talk in this household,” Yeosang says gruffly. “Unless you want me to start in on my four hour lecture about conversion therapy in the states.”

“Ex-nay on the l-word speak, gotcha,” Hongjoong says with a buried giggle. Already he’s feeling loose-limbed and relaxed, mentally floating away from his troubles. Seonghwa breathes smoke into his lungs with a throaty hum again before he’s rolling over to kiss Yeosang deep and filthy. 

Hongjoong closes his eyes while the sound of their lips meeting washes over him. He wishes he had that. Technically he’s got Seungho waiting in the wings so it’s not like he doesn’t have _ options_, but Seungho is just a nice distraction. He doesn’t make Hongjoong want to pull him into dark alleys to kiss or make him desperate enough to beg for a single touch. Yunho though...Yunho has so much potential if only he weren’t Hongjoong’s soulmate.

Seonghwa rolls back when Yeosang steps away to find something to snack on and some drinks to wash out the worst of the eventual cottonmouth. Seonghwa breathes hot and humid against his neck, one leg coming up to slowly shift over his hips.

“What’s this?” Seonghwa rubs at the line of Hongjoong’s dick tenting the fabric of his pants. “Excited about something?”

Hongjoong yawns and doesn’t flinch away from the contact. It’s nice. “Not really.”

“Hmm.” Seonghwa bites his neck. “You know we can help you out with it.”

“Leave my boredom boner alone you lech,” Hongjoong giggles, but reaches down to run his hands over the jeans covering Seonghwa’s thighs. He can feel the shift of muscle when Seonghwa presses harder against his sternum. “I’m not one of your pity cases.”

“No,” Seonghwa agrees and rubs a finger down Hongjoong’s neck to tap his adam’s apple with the tip of a forefinger. “You’re our friend and we want you to feel good. Say the word and you can have a friendly no strings blowie.” Seonghwa kisses the fluttering pulse in his neck again. “I pilfered a bunch of fun color condoms from the last meeting.”

Hongjoong can’t help but to laugh free and easy for the first time in god knows how long. “Those are supposed to be for the little freshman babies, not so you and Sang-ah can get your freak on.”

Seonghwa snickers and nuzzles harder into Hongjoong’s neck and chin before he’s calling out, “Yeosang! Hongjoong has a boner!”

Yeosang calls back, “Well be polite and offer to help him with it!”

“I did!” Seonghwa answers and thumbs over one of Hongjoong’s nipples. He moans. Seonghwa does it again before he’s whispering, “Hey, really, do you want me to stop?”

“No,” Hongjoong breathes back and clutches harder at Seonghwa’s leg rubbing just right against his dick. “Fuck. You can help me out if you really want.”

Seonghwa cheers, and rocks upward to swing his legs over Hongjoong’s hips and props his hands right over the button of his jeans. “Yeosang!”

“What?”  
  
“Get the green neon condoms for me please,” Seonghwa starts the slow, heinously slow process of pulling Hongjoong out of his jeans and his underwear. He leans close when Yeosang starts laughing in the background, footsteps echoing in their hallway no doubt to complete his new mission. “They glow in the dark.” He pulls Hongjoong’s underwear down, already darkened at the very tip from a blurt of precum. It makes Hongjoong hiss, the room is not that much warmer than it is outside and it’s ball-shriveling cold. “We’re going to turn your dick into a _ lightsaber_.”

**\--------------**

Park Misun was beautiful once. A gorgeous up and coming debutante with a knack for acting and a face that could make even Helen of Troy jealous. Looking across the table at her now, with her hair in a severe bun and the corners of her mouth downturned against the pull of botox in her cheeks, Hongjoong wishes he had known the earlier version of his mother. The one not obsessed with fame and glory and notoriety at any cost. The Misun who wasn’t fake in almost every aspect of her day to day life and actually genuinely enjoyed what she was doing regardless if it benefited her or not. The Misun before losing the Best Actress Award and before Kim Beomseok conveniently put her back into the limelight.

His mother delicately removes her glasses and folds them against the stack of papers with Hongjoong’s signature still drying at the corners. 

“You still claim you have no idea who this—this—” her nose turns up, “this _ person _ who everyone seems to claim as your soulmate is? Not a clue? And don’t lie to me because I will know and the punishment will not be worth it.”

“None,” Hongjoong answers as calmly as he can manage. His hands shake but they’re hidden beneath the table so he hopes he’s safe. 

Misun flings a printout of a picture taken from the Dispatch main page at him. It’s a grainy waterlogged capture of Yunho reaching for him in the entrance of that cursed back alley. “Then explain this to me.”

Hongjoong grits his teeth. “I was running away from a sasaeng and the paps just assumed it was some kind of bizarre soul match. Nothing more.”

Misun sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Hongjoong-ah, all I want to do is help you.”

Hongjoong bites back the snort of disbelief, already preparing himself for the inevitable waterworks.

“Your mother was so lucky to find her soulmate in such a public fashion, is it so wrong of me to want my son to find the same? To bring another person into the family so we can show the world how lucky we are?” She begins to sniffle on cue. “I spend so much of my day working to provide for this household and to keep your—your _ idle curiosities _ paid for, and all you repay me with is disobedience and disrespect. You’ve always been ungrateful, even as a child.” She softly dabs away the crocodile tears with the tips of her fingernails. “I’ve always asked for nothing and this one time I ask for your cooperation, you refuse to give it.”

Hongjoong squeezes his hands into tight white knuckled fists. Everything out of her mouth is a lie. She’s guilt tripped him from the moment he was old enough to speak and not once has she owned up to it. He can remember days when he was young, too young to take care of himself but left alone with an ailing nanny who ignored him in favor of sitting on the phone doling out gossip to interested parties, his mother would sometimes come home and complain he was too loud, would stuff pills down his throat to make him sleep so she’d have more time to herself without his chatter. He remembers when she would threaten to take away his bed when he had accidents, like most children do, and remembers the days when she’d come home wailing no one loved her until Hongjoong had carefully told her he did just to make her stop. He went to sleep hungry too many nights because she refused to cook and he was too small to work the oven or the microwave. He was trotted out at charity functions to show the world what a perfect family Misun had and then promptly dumped in greenrooms across the country to wait on uncomfortably stiff couches for someone to remember he existed.

Everyone assumes he’s led a rockstar life with no problems or hardship, but dealing with Park Misun’s constant toxicity...he wouldn’t wish her on his worst enemy. 

“I’m sorry,” he says stiffly, “but I don’t know who my soulmate is at this point in time.”

Misun stops crying.

“Bullshit.” She flings another photo, this one blown up and enhanced so he could just make out the stark outline of a vine beginning to climb up Yunho’s arm where it barely touches against the edge of his jacket. “I’m not going to let you lie to me any longer, Kim Hongjoong. Find this boy and bring him to me or so help me I will make your life a living nightmare.”

She stands and leans most of her body weight against her hands propped on the table just menacingly enough that Hongjoong is forced to gulp against the frisson of fear curling at the base of his spine.

“That means no more music. No more friends. No more university unless the classes are online. No more freedom unless it’s for a publicity schedule. Nothing. You will become so invisible no one will even remember you existed in the first place. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Hongjoong breathes, paling.

“Good.” Misun slides her palms over the smooth edges of her hair. “And Hongjoong?”

He tries not to flinch. He fails. “Yes, mother?”

“Do not touch him until I allow you to.” She pauses at the edge of the doorway. "And don't tell your father about this either."

Hongjoong hangs his head low. _Coward,_ he thinks to himself. “Yes, mother.”

There's a sluggish heat behind his navel trying to direct his attention west. Hongjoong covers it with both hands when his mother is finally out of the room and out of the line of sight. _I'm sorry, Yunho,_ he sends into the ether and squeezes his eyes shut when the invisible connection thrums from the simple acknowledgement. He hopes it's just a trick of his overstressed brain. _I'm so fucking sorry._

**\--------------**

In the aftermath of signing away his life to the literal devil herself, Hongjoong does the only openly defiant thing he can think of:

He calls Seungho.

They’ve only really texted since the last date, too busy with exams and holiday parties to meet up again, but Hongjoong needs an escape. He has to get out of this place.

“Seungho-yah,” he coos after the third ring when his _ whatever _ finally answers, “Are you free any time in the next one to fifteen hours?”

“Oddly specific,” Seungho murmurs in his usual quietly throaty timbre, clearly amused if Hongjoong is reading him right. “But I can move my schedule around for you. What’s up?”

Hongjoong leans his weight against the door of his room, one ear open in case the telltale sound of heels clicking on polished flooring heads his way. “Nothing much.” He glances at his reflection in the window and grimaces at how pale his face is. _ Coward _. “Just wanted to see you.”

Seungho is silent over the connection for a beat longer than Hongjoong is comfortable with and is just about to backtrack when Seungho finally cuts back in. “There’s a new restaurant that opened nearby the apartment I’ve been meaning to try if you’d like to get dinner there with me.”

Hongjoong blows out a breath, relieved. “I’d love to.” Behind him, through two doors and miles and miles of empty house, he can hear the unmistakable sharp click of his mother’s heels. In a panic he drops his voice down to a whisper. “I’ll text you my location in a few. Pick me up when you’re ready?”

“Of course, hyung.” He can hear Seungho breathe deep before he’s stammering a rushed, “I’m glad you called.”

Hongjoong can only make a pleased hum before hastily ending the call and stuffing his phone back in his pocket just in time for his mother to slam her way into his personal space again. 

She’s dressed for a gala when Hongjoong knows she’s just going to her late evening radio show. Her eyes are sharp, dangerous between the sparkling daggers of her earrings. “Who were you talking to just now?”

“Just someone from my study group,” Hongjoong replies and it’s even the truth this time. Seungho being his kind of date is just a coincidence. “The new semester is starting up so we’re all trying to coordinate meeting times and subjects.”

Misun purses her lips. “You’re not meeting _ that boy _ again are you?”

_ That Boy _ was Wooyoung’s unofficial title. After being caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Hongjoong was forbidden from having him around...or speaking to him...or acknowledging Wooyoung existed. A black mark on Hongjoong’s perfect son record Misun had yet to forget—or forgive, for that matter. His stomach churns with a deep rooted sickness just recalling the screaming fit he had to endure in the aftermath.

“No.” Hongjoong digs a nail into his palm to keep his face neutral. “Just my study buddies.”

She gives him another tight lipped squinting sort of look before giving him a curt nod. “Acceptable.” She pulls at the worn soft material of his favorite t-shirt. “Do something about your attire before you leave, walking around in these rags sets a bad image of our family to the press.”

“Yes, mother,” Hongjoong agrees and mentally breathes a sigh of relief when Misun is distracted from further questioning by her assistant calling out the arrival of her hired car to take the pair of them to the radio station. He waits at his bedroom window until the car is out of sight, and then another five minutes after that for his own peace of mind, before ordering a cab to the mostly-abandoned office building and texting Seungho the all-clear.

Mr. Choi, the silent sentry stationed at the building’s entrance, gives him one long look before nodding him in and Hongjoong is intensely grateful for the man’s benevolence. Technically no one is supposed to enter the premises except for his mother or his father—possibly someone bearing a nametag as well, but Hongjoong had yet to meet them—and the guard should have shooed him away. Maybe he’s just glad to have a friendly face around. Maybe he knows about Hongjoong’s familial situation and feels badly for him.

Hongjoong doesn’t have long to dwell on it either way since Seungho arrives only twenty minutes later and beeps his horn once to let Hongjoong know he’s here.

“Thanks again,” Hongjoong waves to the guard on his way out. Mr. Choi gives him a small nod but otherwise doesn’t react. 

“Strange place for a meetup.” Seungho says when Hongjoong hops in the passenger seat. “Do you work here?”

“I don’t think anyone works there,” Hongjoong responds honestly. “I’m not certain anyone has ever worked there but the building still has decent enough wifi.” He leans over the center console to press a kiss to Seungho's cheek. “Hi.”

Seungho’s face colors. “Um—hello. So, dinner?”

“Food!” Hongjoong cheerfully agrees and fiddles with the radio station while Seungho laughs at his increasingly frustrated whining when he can’t seem to land on anything decent. "Don't laugh, stations these days have no tas—"

He’s interrupted by the dulcet tones of the opening chime of his mother’s talk show. 

“Good evening, listeners,” she begins with a sweet lilt to her voice. “Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about soulmates and, as some of you may already know, the wonderful news that my son, Hongjoong, is in search of his own after having a semi-public run-in! Isn’t that amazing? He seems to be following in his mother’s footsteps—”

Hongjoong shuts the radio off completely and the car descends into sudden silence except for the rumble of the tires and the whoosh of cars passing them on the road. His appetite sours. Seungho keeps his mouth shut, which Hongjoong appreciates, but he feels like maybe he should offer up an explanation.  
  
“About what she said—”

“It’s okay.” Seungho reaches over and softly tugs Hongjoong’s hand into the space between their seats to run his thumb over the ridges of Hongjoong’s knuckles. The image of a small closed lily a stark contrast to Seungho's tanned skin. Hongjoong wonders just how young he and Minsi were when they met that his mark is so tiny. “You’ve always been pretty vocal about how much you hate the very idea of soulmates, so I don’t feel threatened.” 

Hongjoong rolls his lips between his teeth. He wasn’t necessarily worried about Seungho feeling _ threatened _ of all things. “Um, but—”

“Actually.” Seungho bashfully rubs at his nose with his free hand when they reach a stoplight. “When your name was all over the news because you fell over at that bus stop, that was the kick in the ass I needed to...to ask for Garam’s help in finally getting your number. You know how shy I am but I didn’t want to lose my chance before you found them and decided to give it a go for publicity’s sake.” Seungho grins at him, flush high in his cheeks. “Thank you for saying yes to me.”

“I—yeah, man,” Hongjoong stutters, “Um, thanks for asking Garam to pass notes for you.”

Seungho laughs. His voice is deep and rich, like dark chocolate and velvety satin, and Hongjoong can’t help but to smile back. He’s still unsure about this whole arrangement—about whether or not he actually likes Seungho enough to call this dating for real—but Seungho is nice enough that he feels, maybe, he could learn to lean on him. Maybe even love him eventually.

Hongjoong pulls out his oversized face mask when they enter into a known paparazzi zone. “Hey, do you want to go back to your place first?”

Seungho keeps his eyes on the road in front of them though his eyebrows rise high on his forehead. “I thought you were hungry?”

“I am,” Hongjoong responds letting his voice drop down to a sultry husk. “Just not for _ food_.”

Seungho’s fist tightens around his own for a brief moment before he relaxes, swallowing audibly in the relative silence of the car. “I—I live with Minsi. She might be around…”

“She’s a smart girl, she knows how to keep a secret,” Hongjoong coos and leans further into Seungho’s space. “Seungho-yah,” he drawls out. “Don’t you want to feed your hyung?”

“Yes,” Seungho squeaks.

“Good,” Hongjoong bites against the curve of Seungho’s shoulder covered by his sweater to mark his place. “Show me where you live, mh? I promise to be on my best behavior.”

Seungho takes the next corner with a pronounced swerve in the road that makes Hongjoong tense, but corrects it fast enough that it doesn’t set off his phobia of all things vehicular. “Well,” Seungho says a touch unsteadily, “Maybe not your _ best_.”

Hongjoong smirks beneath the mask.

**\--------------**

_There’s glass in his lap. He has no idea why, because they’d just been going to the hotel tonight and glass—glass isn’t supposed to be in his lap. His shoulder hurts where the seatbelt bites into his chest but it’s been softened by the strap cover his mother bought him that looks like a bear. One of its eyes is missing, he’d accidentally torn it off by getting it caught on the zipper of his backpack before school. _

_ His cheek stings. _

_ The smell of gasoline is permeating the interior of the car—maybe dad forgot to put the cap back on? He blinks and the stinging in his chest gets worse. When his eyes clear from the sudden disorienting shock of pain, he can see—_

_ Mom? _

_ He screams. _

**\--------------**

Seungho offers to drive him home the next morning which Hongjoong is quick to decline. He’s no doubt already in a world of shit for not being in his room when his mother came back from the radio station last night, no need to poke the beast by showing up well past morning with a pronounced awkward gait and tender hickeys still faintly throbbing along his chest and thighs. Seungho drops a sweet closed mouth kiss to his cheek at the front door, Minsi is thankfully nowhere in sight. Hopefully she’s out of the building so Hongjoong doesn’t have to face her all-knowing smirk about last night.

“Call me if you need me,” Seungho rasps, voice ruined from—_activities_. “Or if you don’t need me call me anyway. I’ll answer.”

“Sure,” Hongjoong replies while pulling on his beanie to hide his still damp hair from a hurried shower. “Uh, remember what I said about ignoring anything you hear on the radio in the next, like, week or so.” He grimaces. “Mom is on a rampage for ratings.”

Seungho reaches one of his huge palms up to rub his thumb over the thrum of Hongjoong’s pulse in his neck. He can feel the scrape of calluses built up from days of hard physical labor without breaks and leans into the pressure. 

“I’m not worried,” Seungho admits, still quiet, “You wouldn’t be dating me if you didn’t want to be with me. Why should I care about whatever your mom tries to feed the public?”

Hongjoong’s blood freezes but he makes sure not to let his discomfort show. _ Dating _. In all fairness, he hadn’t been treating their outings as anything more than friendly hookups. Just something to pass the time without feeling the burden of expectation from having to try too hard to make an impression. He should probably let Seungho know before either of them get hurt by Hongjoong’s indecisive nature. 

He swallows. “Right.” _ Coward_. “See you in class tomorrow.”

Seungho leaves him with a fierce kiss to his mouth and a husky invitation to come back any time.

He runs into Minsi on the way down to the entrance of the building coming out of a neighbor’s apartment with a huge coffee thermos and her schoolbag thrown over her shoulder. At the other end of the hallway, Hongjoong imagines her face tensing like she’s looking at something distasteful is just a trick of the light or the early morning fatigue still clinging to his brain.

“Hongjoong-ah!” Minsi cheerfully waves him over with the hand holding the thermos. “Good morning!”

“Morning,” he bashfully replies and coughs. “Um—sorry about all the noise last night.”

Minsi smiles vacantly at him, unconcerned. “It’s fine. I stayed with my friend so you two could have some alone time without having to worry about me hearing anything.” She nudges him with her elbow once they match strides down the long and winding staircase. “I take it you had fun?”

“You could say that,” Hongjoong says stiffly, feeling a little off-footed talking about this with Seungho’s actual soulmate. Curiosity gets the best of him though and he has to ask, “How do you guys handle, you know, intimacy? With the connection and everything.”

Minsi twirls a lock of hair around her finger. “It’s—” She pauses at the top step, Hongjoong pauses with her a half-step below. “Being roomies helps, since I can be around him long enough during the day that I can sort of shut off any information the connection tries to feed me in case he goes on a date or whatever. Some days are harder to shut off than others.”

They continue down the flight of stairs in relative quiet for a while, the sound of their shoes clacking against cheap linoleum the only other noise in the stairwell.

“That sounds tough,” Hongjoong says mostly to fill the silence.

Minsi giggles. “It’s alright.” She gifts him with another grin, though something about it seems tilted oddly and makes Hongjoong’s skin prickle with unease. “We have some of the same interests to keep everything friendly.”

**\--------------**

Instead of bothering to make the trek home, Hongjoong takes the series of train stations to the hospital to while away the time before his mother is out of the house for the next round of press releases and supposes now would be as good a time as any to try and have some kind of meaningful talk with his father. The doctor spends most of his time at the hospital in cramped beds between shifts, or rents rooms near the hospital so he can pack it up and be back as soon as someone calls a code blue in the emergency wing. Hongjoong can count on one hand the number of times his father had actually come home—once for a token appearance on his mother’s birthday and a handful of times beyond that so he could glare disapprovingly at Hongjoong after Wooyoung was forbidden entry into their home. 

Sometimes Hongjoong will wonder why he even bothers trying to spend time with his dad since at this point the man is such an absentee parent he may as well be referred to as ‘Misun’s reluctant sperm donor’ instead of her husband or Hongjoong’s father.

One of the secretaries at the entrance recognizes him and waves him over.

“If you’re here for Dr. Beomseok, he’s going to be in surgery for the next four hours,” she whispers across the counter at him with a sympathetic expression. “A new case came in last night.”

“I see,” Hongjoong pinches the skin between his fingers, hidden in his jacket pocket, to quell the disappointment. “Thank you for letting me know.”

The secretary nods. “Ah, but your favorite ward has a new face. Why don’t you go up and say hello? Yeseul has been very vocal about your absence.”

Hongjoong laughs. “Do you gossip with the pediatric nurses?”

She grins at him, crisp. “This hospital is not so small that the front desk doesn’t get to hear all the stories from the upper floors.” Another guest hovers behind Hongjoong’s back and she adds a quiet hasty, “Hyojung is my mom.” 

Hongjoong offers an ‘ah’ of surprise before he’s being shooed away.

The elevator ride to the pediatric floor is a slow one. Five people—some sniffling, some smiling, one man pale and drawn like he’s been given a life sentence—filter in on every other floor. One nurse gets on and is gone by the next floor with a muffled curse when she looks at her pager. No one speaks a word as if a hospital elevator is some kind of sacred ground you’re not allowed to disturb with speech. 

The ward is clear of anyone worth seeing when Hongjoong finds his way to the pediatric center. The playroom is in the middle of being sanitized and Jimin’s door is closed with a heavy ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hung on the front. Yeseul’s corner of the world is open, but the little girl is nowhere to be found in the small avalanche of stuffed animals and vibrantly pink bed sheets. Even the nurses station is manned by less than a skeleton crew, just a lone post-grad student he recognizes from last year’s internship doggedly entering numbers from a data sheet.

Hongjoong leans over the counter at him. “Hey, where is everyone?”

The man—Dongyeol by his nametag—only shrugs, keeping his attention focused on the screen in front of him. “New kid had a health hiccup and one of your favorites is getting a nasty respiratory infection so she’s in lockdown. Nursing staff are busy elsewhere.”

Hongjoong wilts. “How bad is it? The respiratory infection, I mean.”

Dongyeol shoots him a stern look. “You know we’re not allowed to discuss the medical history of our patients—”

“Dude,” Hongjoong interrupts, “She’s a fucking orphan, who’s going to rat me out for asking about her health?”

“She’s not an orphan,” Dongyeol says stiffly. “Just because she has family outside of the country right now doesn’t make her an abandoned child.”

“Well fucking off to England for years while they bankroll her treatments is just as bad.” Hongjoong drops from the counter. “I haven’t seen her parents around since I’ve been visiting and I’ve been here since she made her grand entrance.”

Jimin was brought in after someone had found her badly burnt from dumping hot oil over most of her body. A child left alone in a big house while the cook had wandered off in the middle of preparations and Jimin had the unlucky misfortune of grabbing the wrong thing at the wrong time. She’s had innumerable skin grafts to repair the damage, but so many cuts and open wounds and blistered skin made her so susceptible to infection she spent most of her time on antibiotic drips. Hongjoong isn’t sure what her parents actually do for a living considering not once have they made even a token attempt at showing their support for their injured daughter.

It makes his blood boil.

“Hongjoong!” He hears gasped behind him. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

The anger bleeds out of his system and Hongjoong laughs. “Hyojung-ssi,” he says when he turns back around to see the old nurse smiling at him kindly. “I was told there’s a new friend I should meet.”

“Possibly, possibly,” Hyojung pulls him down an opposite hallway from Dongyeol’s position. When they are carefully out of earshot, Hyojung finally stops and shoves her hands into her scrub pockets. “I have some good news and some bad news, which would you like first?”

Hongjoong winces. “Good news first.”

“Yeseul is well enough she’s getting a transfer next month.”

“Oh,” Hongjoong pales. “If that’s the good news then what’s the bad?”

Hyojung sighs and runs a world-weary palm down over her face. It makes the wrinkled lines pull taut and she looks impossibly young for an instant. “The new boy is terminal.” Hongjoong sucks in a breath. “We’ve basically set his room up as comfortably as possible for hospice care but his family is in denial and refuse to take him home.”

“Damn,” Hongjoong whispers and his chest aches for their inevitable loss. “What about Jimin?”

“She’s part of the bad news.” Hyojung guides him to an empty seating area and they rest against the uncomfortable hard plastic. “Jimin is his soulmate.”

“That’s—”

“It’s not good,” she says severely. “She’s recovering from a lung infection but as soon as that boy dies she’s going to die with him. Unless she makes a miraculous enough improvement, the loss is going to bring her right down with him. The soul connection is cruel that way.”

At the base of Hyojung's throat is a scarlet thumbprint. It hadn't always been that way. Hongjoong first met her at the tender age of six when he'd been brought in just after the accident, the mark was a deep inky black almost like someone had dripped calligraphy ink directly from the bottle. He thought it was a mole for the longest time until she'd gently told him about her soulmate, a man twice her age but kind. They'd met by chance at a work function and touched, but he was already married with two children and she was newly engaged and desperately in love with her future husband. They'd received their marks and decided to keep in touch—apparently she still gets cards during the holidays from his widow and the two spend long hours on Chuseok catching up on the latest gossip about their children.

Her mark turned colors while Hongjoong was still in recovery and Hyojung spent an entire day clutching at her throat in pain. Losing that connection turned her voice gruff for a week. It made her stumble during his bandage changes and her fingers sometimes jittered too much to help him with his shoelaces or assist the other nurses with turning Hongjoong over on his bed to stave off the bedsores.

Hongjoong inhales but it feels like he’s sucking in liquid fire. Hurt blossoms in the space between his ribs, his throat closes against the choking sensation of future grief trying to slam its way into the present. “Oh. Jimin…”

“I know,” Hyojung tells him softly and pulls one of his hands to hold between her own. “I know, Hongjoong-ah. I’m sorry.”

“But she—there’s a chance, right? She has an opportunity to get stronger,” Hongjoong desperately pants between sobs he’s only barely holding down. “Tell me there’s a chance.”

Hyojung squeezes his hand tight. “There’s a chance,” she admits before adding, “But please, whatever you do, don’t get your hopes up and just enjoy the time you have with her while you can. You and I have been through this heartbreak before, we’ll go through it again. Together.”

Here, in the silent hospital wing with no one around surrounded by the smell of bleach and antiseptic, Hongjoong breaks down and weeps into the chest of a woman who brings him more comfort than the person masquerading as his mother.

**\--------------**

January comes and goes without much happening. The new boy in the children's ward is in quarantine so no one is able to see or speak with him that's not family and Jimin finally seems to be on the mend from the latest respiratory attack. Yeseul makes him a mountain of colorful drawings to remember her by until she gets big enough that they can get married for real.

"I don't care if my soulmate is just another doodoohead boy," Yeseul stresses while handing him a colorful rendition of a house with a unicorn stationed outside as a pet. "I'm going to get big and strong and marry you anyway."

"Of course you are," Hongjoong grins at her, smitten. "Let's draw something for Jimin, mh?"

Yeseul pouts. "Jimin has a doodoohead boy for a soulmate, did you know? He came in and she almost fell off her bed."

Hongjoong tries not to let his smile falter but the reminder of how close those two are to the reaper's scythe...

"Let's play pirates after this," Hongjoong quickly changes the subject. "Dibs on the good hat."

"Hey!" Yeseul yells in outrage that only the terribly young and impatient can manage. "No fair!"

Other than that, Hongjoong goes to class. He convinces himself to commit to Seungho and stops dropping in on Seonghwa and Yeosang’s apartment for friendly semi-pornographic cuddle puddles. The situation with Wooyoung and San is still tense, for some reason San has refused to do anything more than acknowledge Wooyoung as a potential friend—no romance, no world-ending soul connections, nada. Yunho continues to be a vague pressure in his orbit who has conned Wooyoung into befriending him and the two apparently get on like a house on fire.

Good for them. Hongjoong thinks with only a small dose of regret while staring down at a message from Wooyoung about letting Yunho join in on the troupe’s latest open audition. Maybe Yunho can be the one to get San off Wooyoung’s mind.

Despite his mother’s constant updates via her radio show, Hongjoong avoids the subject of the public reveal of his soulmate for a full month before she threatens to cut off access to his bank account and break apart the one thing that really brings him joy re: his music. 

The very beginning of February, after her latest film flops at the box office and barely scrapes enough sales to cover production costs, Misun barges into his room and yanks his computer out from under his fingers, dangling it precariously in her grip. “Where is your soulmate?”

Hongjoong barely contains the urge to grab it back knowing full well the instant he tries she’ll drop it or just crunch the screen the wrong way on its hinges in retaliation. She’s done it before. “I don’t know.”

“Liar,” she seethes, wild-eyed and snarling in her anger. “You’re going to find me this mystery man, you’re going to bring him to me, and you’re going to stop being a useless son for the first time in your pathetic life.”

Hongjoong grits his teeth. “Mom, if I knew who he was—”

Misun holds the screen at an angle threateningly, the creak of plastic being put under extreme duress echoing in the room. Hongjoong clicks his mouth shut. He hadn’t even heard her _ come home _ and already the situation is at the breaking point. “_That boy _ seems to know who he is. I've seen them together.”

If blood could freeze on command, his veins would be the glacial equivalent of a frozen stream. “Have you been following Wooyoung?”

“Oh please, I’ve seen his updates on instagram,” she says defensively, then, “How else was I going to be sure the two of you weren’t doing disgusting things behind my back?”

_ Disgusting_. That’s all he’ll ever be to her. A disgusting disappoint for appreciating the fine art of sucking dick rather than secreting women up to his room to have hidden trysts that result in bastard children. It would probably make Misun immeasurably happy to have a living, breathing slice of blackmail to dangle over his head instead of living with the _ oh so shameful _ reality of her homosexual son.

He bites his tongue. “I told you we aren’t like that. He’s my friend.”

"Friends don't get caught with their hands down each other's pants when a certain son's mother comes home early from work." Misun holds the laptop above her head like she’s about to smash it against the flooring. “Tell me you know how to get in contact with your soulmate or this is getting thrown over the side of the building and I will _ not _ be replacing it.”

“I—”

She gives him another half-crazed glare, nostrils flared. If this were a fantasy novel instead of his life she’d make an excellent dragon.

Hongjoong’s stomach churns. “I can find out.”

“Good,” Misun closes and shifts the laptop beneath her armpit. “In the meantime, I’ll be holding on to this for safekeeping until you can earn back my trust.”

“You can’t do that!” Hongjoong blurts, panic seizing his limbs and he clutches his hands together tight against the strain.

Misun raises her brows. “No? Who paid for this, mh? Who’s the one who spent long hours in front of a camera and the radio and the press so you could have this computer?” She barks cruel mocking laughter. “All you do is sit on your ass and probably look up pornography all day. I think you can survive without for a while.”

The only options he has are feeding into her narcissistic vanity, so Hongjoong swallows his pride and drops down to his knees while rubbing his hands together in supplication. “_Please_, Mom, this is my last semester and I need my laptop to finish homework. A lot of my classes rely on online assessments and—”

Misun interrupts him with a sharp click of her tongue against her teeth—a rich sounding ‘tch!’ he really only hears at her fancy company galas from other high society nobodies laying down smack talk about the ‘little people’. 

“Fine, have it back if you're going to be such a fucking pussy about it. But remember this is in the contract you signed.” She rudely flings the laptop onto his bed and Hongjoong does his best not to flinch when a corner hits against the wall no doubt cracking the casing. “Prove to me you can be reliable by giving me his contact information in two weeks or less or I’m revoking laptop privileges. You’ll be stuck at the library for your coursework assuming I allow you to leave.” 

"How is my laptop at all part of the contract I signed?" He knows better than to reach for it just yet, not until she's out of the room so she can't slap it out of his hands or take it away again just because he seems eager to use it. Sometimes he thinks she loves taking things away from him more than she does money. "I thought it was just supposed to be a management deal."

"Oh my boy," Misun coos and every hair on his body rises at once in fear. "Did you even bother to _read_ the contract? There's a whole list of things I can give or take away depending on your cooperation or lack thereof. Might want to read it again." She offers him a dainty wave of her fingers before sauntering back out of the room as if nothing had happened. Her cellphone rings. Hongjoong stays on the floor until she's well out of earshot, gets up to close the door again, and turns back to muffle a scream against his palms until his throat hurts and his voice cracks.

_Fuck_. 

**\--------------**

Not for the first time nor the last, Hongjoong swallows back his pride—what little he has left—and begs Wooyoung to give him Yunho’s number. Wooyoung apologetically tells him over FaceTime he doesn’t have it, but San _ does_, so Hongjoong begs to be officially introduced in the hopes he can finesse it out of him instead.

“So you’re the elusive soulmate Yunho has been crying about for the last month and some change,” San says when they meet at the same bookshop cafe that’s become the bane of Hongjoong’s existence and he flinches at the accusatory tone. 

Wooyoung touches his elbow and whispers a demure, “San.”

“Whatever,” San huffs. “Why did you want to meet me?”

“Maybe I wanted to meet Wooyoung’s soulmate for myself,” Hongjoong fires back. San only raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t believe him and Hongjoong sighs. “I need Yunho’s number.”

“So get it from him.” San props his chin against a loose fist. “Don’t see why I have to be your middle man.”

Wooyoung groans and thunks his head into the wood of their table. “For fuck’s sake, can you two stop this weird pissing contest and be friends? This whole exchange is going to give me an _ ulcer_.”

San laughs. “Sorry.” He turns his attention back to Hongjoong, gaze sharp with distrust. “I’ll give you his number if you give me a reason why you can’t ask for it yourself.”

Hongjoong grits his teeth. “I just...can’t. I’m sorry if that’s not good enough for you, but I just want to talk to him without the connection making everything tense and awkward more than it already is.”

San blows a raspberry into the air. “That’s it? Dude, you should have just said you were just nervous and I would have thrown it at you.”

Wooyoung groans laughter into the table. “Jesus christ.”

“So I can have it?” Hongjoong reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone. “Thanks, you’re a life saver.”

San grins at him, all teeth, before taking the device to punch in a new contact. “Quick question, I’ve got a guy friend who’s been interested in Yunho for a while. Is it cool if I introduce the two of them or is Yunho dating, like, super not cool for you?”

“Yunho can do whatever he wants,” Hongjoong says after a beat of confused silence. “I’m his soulmate not his keeper.”

Wooyoung reaches under the table to gently tap the edge of his knee as a show of support. He’s the only other person who knows just what’s at stake if he doesn’t obey his mother’s request. Seonghwa and Yeosang know a little, they know his mother is borderline if not outright abusive, but they don’t understand the extent of her cruelty like Wooyoung does.

He grips Wooyoung’s fingers tight for an instant in thanks just as San hands over his phone, Yunho’s name and his number entered with a winking emoji and a line of different colored hearts.

**\--------------**

The dream again. _ This _ dream again.

Hongjoong blinks into (un)consciousness standing just outside of the wreck of cars still burning on the side of the highway with bodies sprawled over the hood and his mother chainsmoking with her driver and a crew of policemen in the distance. Her face is lit by the red lights of the ambulance and the orange glow of flames. There’s a stack of bills in her hand wadded tight so it would conceivably fit into the palm of someone in a place to lay down charges against her.

He’s back in his six year old body just after someone had draped a scratchy hospital blanket over his shoulders.

“Who are you?” Someone aggressively yells behind him. 

Hongjoong spins and comes face to face with a boy perhaps his own age staring back at him with a slice in his cheek dripping blood in one thick rivulet off the point of his chin. 

“I think a better question is who are _ you _and what are you doing in my dream?” Hongjoong glances back to the wreck and shudders. “Though I guess I should say my memories.”

The other boy freezes. “This is a memory for you?”

“Yeah.” Hongjoong decides to turn his back on the burning imagery and faces this intruder. “A bad one so tell me who you are.”

“I’m—my name is Yunho.” Hongjoong stops breathing. “Is that—I’ve never seen it from the outside like this, but is that Park Misun? The actress?”

Hongjoong grips tight to the imaginary weight of the awful shock blanket. “It is. She’s my mom.”

Yunho stops gaping at Misun to gawp in his direction instead. “Hongjoong?”

“Hi,” he says in a daze. “Hi, Yunho.”

Yunho’s eyes flick between him and the frozen image of his mother mid-bribe like he can’t decide which sight is more unbelievable. “This is—you were in this wreck? You were _ here_?” 

“I was in the backseat,” Hongjoong says. He tugs the blanket tighter in his tiny fists when he realizes, “Wait. Were those—were _ they—_”

Yunho nods, face a bloodless pale white made even paler by the blue light of a police cruiser parked behind him. He points at the mangled bodies on top of the car, thankfully more blurry shapes than clearly defined gore. “Those are—_were _my parents. This is the night they died and I was sent to live in the orphanage.”

Bile, hot and stinging, rises into his throat and Hongjoong hiccups against the burn. “Oh god. Yunho, I’m so sorry.”

Yunho shakes his head. “I was too young to really remember a lot of this, but…” He steps forward to touch at Hongjoong’s fingers beneath his blanket. “But I had no idea you were...I can’t believe you’re _ here_.”

The touch doesn’t burn like it did in the real world and Hongjoong sighs a deep gust of relief. He lets go of the blanket to touch their hands together just for the fuck of it, just to feel Yunho’s skin against his own. “How are we doing this? I don’t think my brain would put you in my worst nightmare just for kicks so you have to be real.”

“I’m real,” Yunho says breathlessly and a little squeaky from youth. “I’m real and you’re real and this is real.” He looks away from Hongjoong’s hands to glare at the cluster of adults making a dirty deal under the cover of night. “Did your mom seriously bribe the officers to keep this hush-hush? Because if I’d known she was the reason I got stuck in that awful place…”

“Looks like it,” Hongjoong flicks the blanket around Yunho’s shoulder to share the warmth. “She’s a despicable person, Yunho. I really wish you didn’t hero worship her so much.”

Yunho stays silent, mouth pinched inward while he watches Misun pay off two groups and laugh at something someone whispers into her ear, before he’s sighing and pitching forward to bury his face in Hongjoong’s neck. “Is that why you ran away from me that day? Is that why you wouldn’t give me your number?”

“A large part of the reason, yeah,” Hongjoong touches the tacky blood on Yunho’s cheek just shy of the cut and blinks away the tears that spring up over his vision. “If it makes you feel better, I have your number _ now_. Got it from San earlier.”

“Good.” Yunho cups his face with his tender palms, small and sweet pinpoints of heat. “Text me when you wake up.”

**\-------------**

Hongjoong thumbs over Yunho’s name for the millionth time in less than twenty minutes trying to work up the nerve to actually text him. It’s one thing to get his contact info from San, it’s an entirely different ballpark to actually put it to use and Hongjoong is a coward to his core. Typing out the first few lines takes bravery he doesn't possess, so he turns to his friends to field questions about his first move. How to start up a conversation with someone Hongjoong doesn't necessarily want to acknowledge and given a horrible first meeting besides.

Yeosang calls him an idiot when he texts him his dilemma and Seonghwa laughs at him over the subsequent FaceTime call to bitch at them both. 

“Just say ‘hi’,” Seonghwa suggests when Yeosang gets fed up with Hongjoong’s wishy-washy mumbling and hands the phone over. “You don’t have to, like, fall all over yourself trying to make a good impression here. We all know you suck at those.”

“Rude,” Hongjoong grumps even though Seonghwa is right and he hadn’t even mentioned how shitty his attitude was the first time he met Yunho. “You’re terrible at advice. I don’t know why they gave you that hole in the wall at the school.”

Seonghwa sticks his tongue out. “I’m better at it than you think. Also I have a shitton of counsel hours to log before they bother to give me my damn diploma.”

Hongjoong hangs up and does as instructed.

**Hongjoong** [10:18 AM] **  
** hi  
this is hongjoong  
sorry im bad at texting but would it be okay if we talk?

**YUNHO~♡♡♡♡♡** [10:21 AM]**  
** ****You remembered

Hongjoong furrows his brows in confusion at the nonsensical response.

**Hongjoong** [10:23 AM] **  
**what??????

**YUNHO~♡♡♡♡♡** [10:35 AM] **  
** nothing  
nevermind  
What did you want to talk about?

Even though their conversation is stilted and oddly charged Hongjoong feels somewhat at ease knowing he has a way to communicate with his soulmate now, if for nothing else than the ability to coordinate schedules so they aren't caught in the same place at the same time. He still has to pass the information along to his mother, and he warns Yunho that it's something out of his control, but still just having the option to give a heads up I'm coming your way text so they can get out of each other's potential orbit is a huge weight off his shoulders. He does end up changing Yunho's display name to a capitalized _DON'T_ because he knows himself and his track record with cute boys, the temptation will be too great at some point and Hongjoong can't risk getting comfortable treating Yunho's contact like something other than an acquaintance. 

They stop texting around midnight, and how that happened he'll never know considering it felt like all they talked about was the weather and coursework. Yunho is apparently taking supplementary night classes when he save up enough to afford them with his jobs at the cafe and a convenience store with terrible hours. Hongjoong falls asleep with a low battery warning and warmth spreading through the connection centered behind his navel.

**\--------------**

The building they’re standing in this time is brightly lit by tall windows overlooking a yard full of playground equipment. Even at first glance Hongjoong can tell it’s old, the plaster molding is cracked along the edges and the floors are obviously warped from humidity. The walls are painted sunflower yellow. Hongjoong watches the shadows of children playing flicker against the wall in fascination.

“Where are we?”

Yunho shudders next to him and he’s only slightly older than the last time Hongjoong saw him in the dream. The scar tissue on his cheek is shiny pink so maybe only a few months since the crash. “This is the orphanage. It’s like a shitty waystation between stays at foster homes and I hate it.” Shadow figures of adults pass by and Yunho cowers harder into Hongjoong’s side. “This isn’t a pleasant memory for me. Please—_please _ just hold my hand. Anything, I—”

Hongjoong hushes him and moves as far into Yunho’s space as he can manage, wedges Yunho’s head into the curve of his shoulder to hide him from the worst of the creeping figures. “Just close your eyes and think of something happy.”

“Easier said than done when we’re sitting in the middle of my least favorite memory,” Yunho says while his body quakes. “What was your childhood like? Surely better than this.”

And just like that they’re transported from Yunho’s past to the interior of Hongjoong’s childhood home. It’s the small penthouse before Hongjoong’s father had bankrolled an additional building closer to the midway point between the hospital and Misun’s management firm.

It’s not nearly as welcoming as the bright walls of Yunho’s orphanage. The walls here are deep burgundy, the furniture is all severe angles and uncomfortable, and Misun is a towering figure glaring down at the pair of them with the bottle of sleeping pills Hongjoong learned to hate on sight held in one fist.

“Yunho,” he whispers into his soulmate’s hair. “If you’d like to understand why I hate Park Misun so much, then now would be an excellent time to look up.”

Yunho does and even out of the corner of his eyes Hongjoong can tell he’s going pale—whether from fright or being so close to his idol he’s not sure.

“What is she doing?” Yunho questions. “Why is she staring at you like that?”

Hongjoong looks back and sees a fragmented image of himself mid-wave, frantically trying to promise he’ll be quiet. He searches for Yunho’s hands and, when he finds them, digs his nails against his knuckles as the first wave of nauseous anxiety crests.  
  
“She’s staring at me like that because I’ve always been her unwanted whipping boy and she’s about to force feed me illegal sleep aid so she can fuck off to another social function for the evening.” He chokes when the disembodied sound of his screaming filters through the haze. He doesn’t know if Yunho hears it too or if it’s just an awful feedback loop happening in his own brain. “Used to be every weekend, then it was every other night until my dad found the pills and made her promise to stop.”

Yunho shifts the ball of their entwined fingers until he can work a hand free and touches the edge of Hongjoong’s cheek so tenderly he feels almost as breakable as Yunho is treating him.

“Did she?”

Hongjoong exhales. “No. But she _ was _ more sneaky about it. Started mixing them in my food and drinks and claimed I was just an exceptionally tired child.”

Yunho’s palm is a welcome warmth cupped against his cheek.

“I always loved your mom’s movies, especially the ones about her soul connection. I always dreamed about finding my own soulmate and living happily ever after like she did.” Hongjoong bites his tongue to keep from snorting. Yunho continues softly, “If I had known what she did to you…”

“It’s okay,” Hongjoong says when it’s really not. “No one is ever allowed to know what Park Misun is really like except for family, and dad hasn’t been back in years because of it.”

**\--------------**

Tentative accord with his soulmate acquired and information delivered to his mother’s grasping greedy claws after a week, Hongjoong is pressured to attend the next charity event being held at an old theater that’s been repurposed into a conference hall slash ballroom. Misun demands that Yunho attend as if Hongjoong can give her an answer for him. She wants Hongjoong to make a small speech and then make a spectacle of himself for her benefit at the very end by jerking into Yunho’s direction backstage.

“Can’t I just pretend to fall over?” Hongjoong grimaces when she snatches the little paper he’d written Yunho’s number down. “I don’t think it’s necessary to _ actually _ have him around…”

“No one is asking what _ you _ think,” Misun grumbles snidely under her breath. “Stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Hongjoong bites his tongue, bowing out of the room while Misun barks orders over the phone at her PR team who are no doubt as tired of the constant harassment as Hongjoong himself. She’s already ordering a round of background checks by the time he makes it to his room and her voice rises in pitch when someone, apparently, makes the mistake of questioning the legality of her methods. 

**Hongjoong** [1:36 PM] **  
** you’re about to get a bunch of skeevy phone calls  
fair warning

**DON’T** [1:42 PM] **  
**um

**Hongjoong** [1:43PM] **  
** park misun would like you to attend her next charity gala  
it’s in everyone’s best interest you say yes

**DON’T** [1:44 PM] **  
** oh!  
id be honored  
she’s my idol id love to meet her  
do you think i can get an autograph????

Hongjoong breathes deep against the urge to gag and sends a nondescript ‘sure’ instead of the ‘what the fuck is wrong with you’ that he wants to scream while hanging out of his window three stories up. It would give the paps something to gossip about other than his mother’s radio announcements and the tiny snapshots they manage to take of Hongjoong going to class at least.

**\--------------**

Heat beats down against his shoulders and Hongjoong luxuriates in its warmth, spread out on his back in the middle of an open field with his palms outward to hold the otherworldly rays of the sun. Outside this haven is January chill, frigid beyond the walls of his home and blisteringly cold during the long walks to the bus stop. Even the paps tend to say home this time of year with only the truly desperate and hungry for something newsworthy that isn’t Hongjoong ignoring them or Misun embracing their cameras or his father staying hidden like a hermit in his big hospital.

Yunho finds him not long after Hongjoong has starfished himself in the grass. He can feel Yunho’s legs slide beside his own and only just holds back a throaty purr of contentment at the feel of them. Long fingers trace over each of his eyelids, down the slope of his nose, the contours of his mouth, before shifting through his fringe to scrape against his scalp. Hongjoong leans into them like a cat, satisfied. 

“You don’t remember these dreams, do you?” 

“No,” Hongjoong sighs. He cracks an eye open to squint at Yunho hovering over him propped on one arm. “Do you?”

“I do. I _ did_.” Yunho looks and looks and looks at him. “You sent me that first message and I thought—but then you acted like I was saying something weird.” 

Hongjoong rolls into Yunho’s side so he can shift his arm over Yunho's stomach, enjoying the twitching clench of muscles beneath his palms. “I’m sorry.” He grins up at Yunho’s pouting face. “If it makes you feel any better, talking to you is one of the few highlights of my day even if I won't ever admit to it. You should text me all the time.”

Yunho grins but it’s small and bashful, even the scar on his cheek looks self-conscious. “I don’t think the real you would be very happy about that. You don’t really make it a secret that you don’t like me or _ this_.” Yunho wiggles his hand with the malformed vine around for emphasis.

Hongjoong groans and bullies his way into Yunho’s space until he can get him rolled onto his back, better positioning for Hongjoong to prop himself in Yunho’s lap. His soulmate flushes bright pink, then red, centered over his nose and high in his cheeks. Yunho keeps his hands carefully fisted into the grass by Hongjoong’s knees. 

“The real me has more personal hangups than a coat rack, don’t take it personally.” He traces Yunho’s scar with the tip of his forefinger. “You’re really pretty. Has anyone ever told you that? Like _ really_.”

Yunho scrunches his face up behind a hand slapped over most of his face, encapsulating Hongjoong’s fingers, and whines. Hongjoong laughs at him because Yunho’s ears are blazing red and so adorable he’s only just containing the urge to coo. 

“Hyung,” Yunho says, muffled, “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Hongjoong peels Yunho’s fingers away, going so far as to pry open one of Yunho’s eyes when he tries to squeeze them shut out of embarrassment. “I’m serious.” The warmth of the sun is starting to wane which can only mean the small oasis they have here in this shared dreamspace is starting to leave too. “Yunho,” Hongjoong says intensely. “You’re _ gorgeous_.”

The moment hangs still, both of them stagnating in place while they wait for the other to make some kind of move, until Yunho surges upward to crush their mouths together—all teeth and tongue and searching. Hongjoong leans into it, clenching his hands into the material of Yunho’s sweater until the feel of Yunho’s teeth against his bottom lip and the searing warmth of his tongue fade to nothing. 

And with them: the memory.

**\--------------**

The charity event ends up being a poorly concealed opportunity for Misun to shop around her latest idea for an upcoming book. Something about finding the enormous task of finding home which is just frilly ghost writer speak about the hunt for her son’s soulmate. He doesn’t see Yunho in the sea of executives and moneymen, though he can feel the tug of their connection trying to pull him backstage, so he keeps his head down, speaking only when spoken to by people who get the nod from the assistant hired to keep him in line. 

Hongjoong feels stifled by the starched tailored suit he’d been stuffed into on arrival in the green room that was overflowing with floral arrangements and thick manila envelopes holding potential scripts and hopeful contract offers. The cuffs are so stiff he thinks they would probably cut the glass of the flimsy champagne flutes being circled around the room. The drink isn't cheap by any means, bubbles tingling in his mouth and his nose when he takes appropriately tiny sips.

“You’re needed backstage,” the assistant says at the same moment she takes away the flute of half-finished champagne. “Through the door at the back and down the second hallway to your right.”

“Am I allowed to take a piss first?” Hongjoong mutters. The assistant gives him the dead-eyed stare of someone not paid enough to care about his bladder so Hongjoong threads his way through the crush of bodies milling about to find the backstage door. 

He knows Yunho is on the other side of the door by the way his stomach lurches and his back burns. Hongjoong takes a deep, steadying breath and turns the knob. 

If knowing he had a soulmate was uncomfortable, seeing him here, and somehow gorgeous in a suit picked off a thrift store rack for less than a day’s wages, is downright unbearable. Yunho is awkwardly huge in his clothes, his wrists bare and the edges of his slacks bunched just shy of his socks. Yunho looks back at him like a man being offered a feast and told he’s only allowed to look. 

Hongjoong doesn’t realize his mother is even in the room until she’s snapping her fingers in front of his nose and scowling fierce enough to crack her foundation. The red of her sparkling gown reflects in the dark of her eyes and he shivers when it gives her the illusion of demonic possession. “Kim Hongjoong, are you even listening to me?”

“My apologies,” Hongjoong says stiffly, finally jerking his gaze away from Yunho sitting pretty on an old moth eaten settee. “The drinks went right to my head, you know how it goes.”

Misun eyes him like she wants to say more, or yell more, but is kept in check by the fact they have a somewhat welcome guest in their midst. “As I was saying to this boy here—”

“It’s Yunho, ma’am.” His soulmate gently reminds her. 

Hongjoong watches a muscle jump in her cheek from being interrupted and wonders how many hours of screaming he’s going to be subjected to later for the perceived slight. “Of course. As I was saying to _ Yunho_, we’re trying to drum up interest for the next book release my team is already crafting surrounding your,” she trails off with a wrinkle in her nose, “_unique _ soulmark situation.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Yunho bashfully cup the half-formed vine on his knuckles to hide it from view. 

“I’m going to give a speech towards the end of the festivities and I want you to stand behind me.” She turns to snap her fingers in quick succession until another assistant materializes in her orbit and snatches a sheet of paper out of their grip. “When I give the signal, you’re going to stumble in his direction and _ exactly _ his direction. Do you hear me?”

Hongjoong nods, hands carefully hidden behind his back so she can’t see the way his fingers tremble.

Misun nods once. “Good.”

The assistant steps away to speak into his headset and comes back with a hurried, “Misun-ssi, they’re ready for your entrance.”

She sighs as if it’s a terrible chore to make a grand entrance into a ballroom filled with people vying for her attention. “If I must.” Before they leave the room, she shoves the sheet of paper into Hongjoong’s chest alongside a pen. “Have him sign this before you join me on stage.”

And just like that, Hongjoong is left alone with his soulmate.

Yunho fidgets. “You look nice.”

“I look like an idiot,” Hongjoong says in rebuttal because he can’t handle someone as pretty as Yunho giving him compliments. “Did she have you sign anything else before I got here?”

Yunho nods. “A confidentiality thing...said it was about the book deal and nothing to worry about.”

Hongjoong sighs. He’ll have to find a way to get a copy for himself and see what exactly Yunho has signed away before it comes back to bite them both in the ass. As it stands, the sheet slowly starting to crumple in his shaking hands is a security waiver—something about not being responsible for any physical harm that may be in direct correlation to being associated with the Park Misun brand.

He drops the pen and paper on the footstool in front of Yunho’s perch and puts as much distance between them as the tiny green room allows—which isn’t much. What little room there is has already been occupied by so much flora that there’s only a short five or six foot area to maneuver.

Yunho watches him. Hongjoong knows because he can’t seem to stop staring right back.

“It is really nice to see you again,” Yunho finally murmurs. “As much as you hate me—”

“I don’t _ hate _ you,” Hongjoong quickly bites out, reflexive instinct to defend himself. “I just hate the circumstances _ surrounding _ you.”

“Same difference,” Yunho says with a self deprecating kind of laugh. “It’s still nice to be in the same room.” He grins, a little crooked thanks to the scarring on his cheek. “Hi.”

Whatever Hongjoong wanted to say—something scathing and mean to make Yunho stop being so agreeable and sweet—gets swept away by the insistent tug behind his navel and the strain in his knees trying to shove him into Yunho’s lap. He deflates. “Hi.” He rests a hip against the edge of an old vanity that’s seen better days two decades ago. “San says he’s got a boy for you.”

“San says a lot of things,” Yunho says cryptically and his eyes seem to darken. “Doesn’t matter either way, I’ve already got my eyes on someone.” 

Hongjoong grimly rolls his lips between his teeth. “Might want to close them then.”

Yunho stands and aggressively stalks forward until he can press his palms against the old gilt frame of the mirror behind Hongjoong’s head. They don’t touch but the heat radiating from Yunho’s body is enough to make his head swim and his stomach burn with muted desire. “You know, you could be nicer to me when it takes so much fucking effort not to touch you.”

Yunho’s mouth is rose petal red. Hongjoong keeps his eyes locked there and can’t help but wonder if they taste as sweet as they look.

“Don’t,” he whispers, husky and deep even to his own ears.

Yunho leans in close, breathes hot and humid against his neck. “Hongjoong.”

He shivers. He says, “Yunho, _ please _” and has sense enough to know he has no idea what he’s begging for. Please come closer. Please go away. Please touch him and touch him and never stop, Park Misun’s agenda be damned.

Yunho growls low in his throat. “I can’t move,” he admits, dark, “you’re going to have to leave if you don’t want me to give in.”

Hongjoong squeezes his eyes tight to block out the too tempting visual of Yunho’s neck flushing pink and ducks down to scoot beneath the welcoming circle of Yunho’s arms to the unwelcome enormity of the rest of the world. 

“See you out there. Don’t forget to sign that waiver,” Hongjoong says before he’s speed walking out the door and back down the hallway, passing a frazzled assistant speaking rapid fire into her headset.

Less than an hour later, Hongjoong stumbles right on cue in the direction they’ve stationed Yunho—a dark corner where the light of the stage can’t reach—which is directly behind a grouping of gasping, excited socialites all tittering over who it could be about. He leaves when Misun begins her spiel about investments now that he’s clearly not needed, skin still overheated and the low burn of arousal settling in hot coils in his gut with nowhere to go.

He doesn’t stop to find out if Yunho is going to hang around, just pulls out his phone and makes a call.

Seungho presses him face down into his bed with hot hands and his sweat slicked chest burning hot against his back. Here Hongjoong doesn’t have to think, he doesn’t have to feel guilty for brushing Yunho off. He can put himself in Seungho's sturdy palms and let his mind float away from his troubles.

“Did you have fun at the charity thing?” Seungho murmurs in dark baritones against his back, punctuating the statement with a deep bite and a sucking bruise on the notches of his spine. Hongjoong whines from the hurt. “Did you get to dance with a bunch of people who only want you for your mother’s money?”

Hongjoong groans into the steady rhythm of Seungho’s hips. “It was boring, They’re always boring, please just—”

Seungho turns his head with two fingers pinching the curve of his chin. “You’re too good to only be trotted out like a show pony for her benefit.”

Hongjoong silently agrees with him, kisses the agreement to Seungho’s mouth and lets the final glorious rush pull him back under to dreamland.

**\--------------**

Smoke. The smell of gasoline. The mangled wreck of cars on the side of the highway. Hongjoong has had this dream so many times now he’s beginning to wonder if the universe is trying to tell him something. Maybe some sort of life lesson like hey don’t buy a Mazda.

This time he’s standing just outside of the cars instead of being young and in pain, trapped by a seatbelt and cut up by shattered glass. The whole scene has a sense of unreality to it because there are no _ people _ around this time—usually he’ll dream about the bodies strewn over the car like macabre hood ornaments.

“Nice night for an evening.” Someone says behind him.

“Weird thing to say in a dream about a car crash,” Hongjoong responds. 

“Sorry, I don’t usually have company for this specific memory.” Yunho drapes himself along Hongjoong’s back so he can bring his arms around Hongjoong’s middle to gather him gently against his chest. “Can’t say it’s particularly romantic either.”

Hongjoong doesn’t have anything to say to that so he leans against the steady line of Yunho’s body behind him and sighs. “You know I’ve never been able to drive because of this?”

Yunho hums. “I’ve never had parents because of this night so I guess we’ll call it even.”

The landscape changes until it’s daylight and all that remains is a dark smudge of oil drying on the road. Hongjoong threads his fingers through the ones trembling against his navel.

“Do you ever miss them?”

Yunho is silent for a long time. Long enough the dream changes again to the dark underbelly of the gala stage—another shared memory though the props area is all formless lumps and deep pools of shadows that look as if he’d fall forever if he stepped on any of them.

“I'm not going to pretend that being in the orphanage was all sunshine and rainbows, because it's not, but I was too young to really remember what it was like..._ before_,” Yunho finally admits. “All I have now are flashes of dark hair in my hands when my mom would pick me up and the smell of dad’s aftershave.”

“Good memories then,” Hongjoong says. “Better than anything I’ve got.”

As if to punctuate the statement, the dream flashes to the inside of his parent’s penthouse before the hospital was fully operational. His father is reading a medical text on the large dining table though the words are hazy smudged lines. His mother is drinking a scotch in the offset kitchen. A smaller Hongjoong—he was maybe eight or nine at this point—is holding a scraped elbow while his parents ignore his whimpering in favor of their own interests.

Yunho holds him tighter. “We could make new memories if you’d just let me see you in the real world.” His head is heavy against Hongjoong’s shoulder. “Just once I want to see you face to face and it not be behind a curtain for your mom. I'm tired of only talking to you over text messages.”

Hongjoong trembles all over, knees quaking from how badly he wants that too.

“We can’t,” he mumbles through chattering teeth. “I never remember these sessions the way you do and I’m sorry. If you tried any of this in the real world, I’d just run away because I’m a _ coward_.”

Yunho turns him around so they can face each other—so Hongjoong can see the devastated wreck of Yunho’s face crumbling in on itself from the tears only barely held back. “But _ why_? I don’t understand you Hongjoong, I really don’t.”

“Because I can’t afford to fall in love with you more than I already have,” Hongjoong finally admits, voice hoarse, and Yunho makes a sound like he’s suffering. He probably is and it’s all Hongjoong’s fucking fault. “I’ve never been able to get a job so I have to rely on my parents’ money and their careers. I’m trying to save as best as I can...but, Yunho, I have nothing to my name. There are no failsafes. There are no trust funds or anything to stop me from being completely dependent on their mercy.” He wipes away the first slip of tears from Yunho’s cheeks with his thumbs and pretends the touch of dream skin is enough. _ This _ can be enough. “Not touching you until she gives up on this whole soulmate book tour is the only way I can even begin to have an out.”

Yunho catches his hand before Hongjoong can force himself to stop touching. “You can be safe with me.”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “Yunho, I'm sorry. I really, really am but I’m also dating someone _ out there_. He’s nice and has a soulmate that isn’t me so it feels safer than being with you.” Yunho’s face pinches inward, not that Hongjoong blames him. Just thinking about Seungho here in the space that’s supposed to belong to just the two of them makes him feel vaguely ill. The shadows backstage lengthen, turn sharp and jagged and unwelcome. “I can’t—” He hiccups a sob and—oh, when had he started to cry?

Yunho pulls him into a hug. Hongjoong sucks in the comforting scent of cheap laundry detergent and spice, something uniquely Yunho he wants to keep in his lungs for as long as possible. 

“It’s okay,” Yunho reassures him, “We’ll always have each other _ here _ where you feel safest.” Hongjoong clutches at the yellow hoodie now so familiar beneath his fingertips. “Here where I can tell you I love you and have you understand it’s not just because we’re soulmates.” 

The admission breaks his chest wide open and Hongjoong starts sobbing in earnest. “I don’t want to wake up, Yunho. I don’t want to go back there. _ I don’t_!”

“I know.” Yunho offers him a watery smile, threads his fingers through Hongjoong’s fringe, and sweeps his thumbs down Hongjoong’s cheeks to try and clear away the tears. “But you have to. I’ll be here waiting for you to come back.”

Hongjoong wakes up to Seungho snoring into his ear like a chainsaw, an arm slung over his chest, and the unpleasant flavor of fruity lube clinging to the back of his throat. When he checks his phone it’s to find a handful of texts from Wooyoung and San, several others from his mother, and one from…

Yunho—_DON’T_ in capital letters—has texted him a simple ‘good morning’ that sends his heart racing. Hongjoong keeps it open, thumbing over the screen when it fades to black. It was sent less than five minutes ago.

It’s _ noon_.

Hongjoong puts his phone back on Seungho’s nightstand and stares at the crumbling popcorn ceiling feeling oddly giddy. 

**DON'T** [12:05 PM] **  
**good morning

**Hongjoong** [12:13 PM] **  
**it is

**DON'T** [12:14 PM]**  
**♡

**\--------------**

Seonghwa and Yeosang somehow get Hongjoong to participate in a campus tug of war contest as part of a larger GSA fundraising event just before Valentine’s Day. Luckily for him, paps are forbidden from entering the campus proper, otherwise Hongjoong wouldn’t be able to do more than stand and watch. He still wears a face mask and a ballcap on that disguise his identity should anyone get a little too curious just in case. Just to be safe.

“You look like a serial killer,” Seonghwa says, poking at the mask directly over his mouth. If the flimsy fabric weren’t in the way, Hongjoong would bite at his fingers in retaliation. “You sure you’re not going to overheat with the mask on?”

“I’m going to try not to, thank you.” Hongjoong kicks at the end of the large knotted rope. “What is this all about, exactly? You never actually explained why we’re playing rope in the middle of the day.”

“It’s an exercise in visualizing the struggle between what society expects of you and what you want for yourself.” Seonghwa says with his nose rising higher and higher in the air with every word. “Also Yujin found it in one of the abandoned depths of the prop storage of the theater department and I just really wanted to play with it.”

“Figures,” Hongjoong laughs, before dipping down to hold the weighty fibrous end. “Get your people assembled so we can get this over with.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re too impatient?” Seonghwa sneakily pulls the mask down over Hongjoong’s cheek and blows a slobbery raspberry against his skin. 

“Anyone ever tell you to quit putting your mouth where it doesn’t belong?” 

Seonghwa grins at him unrepentant and shrugs. “Nope. Never.”

“I know I haven’t,” Yeosang quips and leans against Seonghwa’s shoulder to drop a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “The warriors are ready when you are.”

“To arms!” Seonghwa hoots.

The tug is brief, less than three minutes of pulling and shoving and cursing Seonghwa for making Hongjoong use his muscles for this. Towards the end when Hongjoong's side is losing miserably, everyone seems to let go at once without warning and he goes sliding into the ground, dirt caking against his clothing and grass finding its way beneath his shirt. 

"Aw shit," Hongjoong whines in the aftermath, pulling the stained fabric from his chest. His jacket has somehow been saved the worst of the mess but his shirt is covered with a green and brown stripe of mud and grass. "I can't go to class with this all over me."

Seonghwa is off cheering with his team, Yujin at the head of the pack with a piece of paper folded into a makeshift megaphone, but Yeosang is close by and offers to replace it with one of Seonghwa's extras he keeps in his office in case someone cries all over the one he's wearing and he needs to change. 

"Seonghwa gave me an extra set of keys after he lost his the second time around," Yeosang says while bent to unlock the door. His soulmarks seem to gleam bright under the fluorescent lighting. He wonders sometimes if it hurt when the thick bands began to materialize around Yeosang's throat. "How do you feel about neon pink?"

Hongjoong cringes. "I'd rather wear mud."

Yeosang passes him a bundle of thankfully plain beige linen and rests against the door while Hongjoong changes. He's only just gotten his shirt up and over his head when Yeosang inhales, loud in the quiet, and remarks, "Did you know you have a mark?"

Hongjoong freezes with his shirt still hanging off of one arm. "Excuse me?"

"A mark," Yeosang gently repeats and walks close enough to dig the tips of his fingers into his back. "Right here. Looks a little like a wilted flower."

Yunho has a vine. 

_Yunho_ was supposed to be the only one with a mark. 

Hongjoong breathes, in-out, in-out, rapid fire just to make his lungs inflate but the oxygen doesn't seem to come with them. "I have a—I have—" The room spins in dizzying half-circles. Yeosang says something that Hongjoong can't parse, everything muffled except for the loud—too loud—rush of blood in his ears. "We didn't touch, I can't have—I can't—"

Hongjoong blinks once and sees spots. He blinks twice and sees nothing.

He wakes up laid flat on his back with Seonghwa's shirt pillowed beneath his head. Yeosang is gently rubbing at his hands and wrists.

"Welcome back," Yeosang says, thin lipped and worried. "Are you okay? How do you feel?"

Hongjoong thinks of Yunho's mark and his whole body seems to want to shove itself through the window facing directly north. His back begins to itch and now Hongjoong has the sense to realize it's not just a case of acute hives. "Can you...can you take a picture for me? I want to see it."

Yeosang eyes him warily. "I'm not so sure you should be sitting up just yet."

"Please," Hongjoong begs, quietly gutted from being branded and not knowing it, and props himself up despite the blood trying to rush immediately out of his head. "Please, I have to know."

Yeosang nods, thankfully, and snaps a picture of the mark with his phone quickly so he can shove Hongjoong back to the floor to rest.

Hongjoong traces the edge of the mark in horrible, terrified wonder. "What kind of flower is that?"

"Google says it's a cornflower." Yeosang winces when Hongjoong shoots him a look at the quick response. "I—sorry, you were out for a few minutes and I had some time. Thought you'd want to know when you finally woke up."

"Ah," Hongjoong sits up, curling around Yeosang's phone and the humming tension of the connection behind his navel. His hands are trembling. "It's pretty."

"It's beautiful," Yeosang agrees, and then he's gently taking the phone back and pulling Hongjoong into his chest while Hongjoong pinches at the spaces between his own fingers and goes mute. ****

**\--------------**

Hongjoong finally meets the new boy in the ward on a day when Jun is feeling somewhat spry despite the malignant cancer eating away at his innards. He’s a thin thing with barely the strength to pull the metal IV pole attached to him at all times, but he grins wide when Jimin proudly shows off their marks. Jun has a splotch up the length of his left arm that looks a bit like a unicorn if you squint, while Jimin has the fuzzy outline of an anemone on her right cheek.

Yeseul calls them gross as the two hold hands but all Hongjoong can see are two little kids grasping for happiness when the world is handing them anything but. 

“Hongjoong-oppa, our marks are really, really strong! I almost ripped all the stitches in my knees when Jun came in,” Jimin excitedly tells him. She’s got a feeding tube leading through one of her nostrils now, too weak to chew and swallow thanks to the infection that’s started to spread up her esophagus.

“That’s amazing, Jimin-ah.” Hongjoong pours out a dollop of blue acrylic paint onto a paper plate and holds up the rest of the colors he’d scrounged from the depths of the hospital’s gift shop dead stock. “What color do you want your handprint to be? Yeseul already claimed blue but we’ve got pink, green, and—” Hongjoong squints at the label, “something called ‘lemon chiffon’.”

Yeseul had begged him for fingerpaints so she and Jun could leave a lasting image on Jimin’s door, and Hongjoong was helpless but to agree. He’s got the three kids propped up on wax paper covered pillows in a semi-circle around Jimin’s door, spreading out supplies and keeping an eye on Jun’s slowly draining IV.

Jun tugs his sleeve. “Can I have pink?”

“Of course, buddy.” Hongjoong pours out a dollop that’s half congealed with age. “You like pink?”

Jun nods and takes his plate delicately so he can swirl the color in the same size as his palm. His breath rattles his chest on every inhale so his voice is weak and reedy. “I think it’s a really pretty color. All of mom’s sweaters have pink in them.”

Yeseul bounces on her knees while Jimin very seriously considers the green and yellow containers. “Oppa, oppa, can we have ice cream after this? Every party has ice cream, so we have to have ice cream too!”

“Mmmm, I don’t know, Yeseul-ah. Is ice cream allowed on your recovery worksheet?” Hongjoong accepts the pale yellow tube Jimin solemnly places into his hand and ruffles the sparse hair on Yeseul’s head with the other. “I’d have to ask nurse Hyojung first.”

Jimin takes her plate of color like she’s accepting a prestigious award, but Hongjoong has to take it back when her racking cough gets so bad she can’t see and overbalances into his knees. Hongjoong rubs her back and tries not to panic at the knobs of her spine rolling against his palm. She’s not getting better. Yeseul is getting transferred next week and at this rate he’s going to lose Jimin too. 

Hyojung warned him but he thought—he _ hoped—_she would somehow be strong enough to stay.

Once the coughing subsides, each of the kids dip their right hand into their respective globs of paint and, with Hongjoong’s help to steady them, place the shape of their handprint against the grain of Jimin’s door to remember their bond. Yeseul looks at the drying paint, looks back to the rest of the hospital proper, and bursts into tears.

“Yeseul-ah! Baby, what’s wrong?” Heedless of the paint still tacky on her hand, Hongjoong pulls the little girl into his chest where she hides her face and her sad little hiccuping breaths. “Yeseul…”

Jimin and Jun huddle in close too, tiny hands petting gently at Yeseul’s back while she buries her mouth against Hongjoong’s shoulder and tries to swallow back her grief. 

“I don’t want to leave!” Yeseul finally wails. “I wanna stay here with Jimin! Why do _ I _ have to go?”

Hongjoong rocks her still awkwardly crouched on his knees. “That just means you’re closer to going home for _ good. _ Aren’t you excited to see your house and your dog and your friends at school?”

“No,” Yeseul stubbornly denies. “I wanna stay _ here _.”

One of the other nurses that Hongjoong has met in passing maybe once, whispers a quiet, “We have to take Jun back in a few minutes.”

Hongjoong nods and begins poking at Yeseul’s side until the little girl is making shy cut-off giggles against his neck. “Come on now, you gotta be brave. Aren’t pirates brave?”

“I’m _ not _ a pirate right now,” Yeseul pouts, wriggling her way out of his arms and back on the floor to hold Jimin’s hand, the clean one that’s now smeared with blue. “ _ You _ should go be brave and bring us ice cream.”

“This is blackmail!” Hongjoong theatrically throws his hands in the air. “Shenanigans!”

The kids laugh at his antics, even Jun who can barely do much more than wheeze through his nose. Jimin bats at his legs. “Can we go pillage the cafeteria for strawberry sherbet? It’s been so long since I’ve had any…”

Hyojung texts him the okay, and the location of the secret stash in the nurses’ station, so he bundles Jimin into her wheelchair and zooms down the hallways whistling spy movie-esque tunes while she shrieked her delight. Yeseul has the oversized pirate hat shoved over her head, except she’s also pretending to be a spy by sneakily looking into doorways and creeping across the thresholds with her hand held in the shape of a make believe gun. Jun bowed out, too weak to even begin to consider the long walk down the seemingly endless hallway, and gets escorted back to his room for another round of painkillers.

**\--------------**

Between the rollercoaster of emotions coming to terms with his mark, suffering his mother, and dealing with the turmoil of imminent loss, Hongjoong falls asleep in the back of the train on the ride home. 

The landscape is dark and gloomy. It flashes between the interior of the hospital playroom and the odd sight of a deserted train car until settling on a bizarre medium between the two. Vinyl seating slowly morphing into the solemn quiet of a once vibrant ward now little more than a place for children to die. Hongjoong folds into himself, holding his arms around the knees shifting upward into his chest. His shoes squeak where they push into the seat.

“I don’t want to wake up,” Hongjoong says once the heat of Yunho’s body slides close to his own. “I want to stay here and never leave so I don’t have to deal with the real world.”

Yunho rests his cheek against Hongjoong’s head. “Where are we?”

“My happy place,” Hongjoong says, then, “Or at least, it used to be. My dad’s hospital has a children’s recovery ward I spent a lot of time in after the crash and I like to make visits when I have time. One of the little girls I’ve grown attached to is about to get transferred and the other is—she’s not...she’s not going to go home.”

Yunho keeps still beside him as the sound of childlike laughter filters over the crackling sound system overhead. 

“I’m sorry,” Yunho finally settles on after a long moment of quiet. “Is she—I mean, is she comfortable at least?”

“Yes. The nurses do what they can. Plus, she met her soulmate so she’s been over the moon excited about it. It’s the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time.” Hongjoong drops his feet back to the ground and wipes his eyes harsh before turning to Yunho to face him properly. “I want _ you _ to be happy too.”

Yunho cradles his cheeks in his huge warm hands and where they touch tingles in bright zinging shocks of something not unlike the feel of a limb finally waking up after the blood supply had been cut off—like television static. “I am happy. _ You _ make me happy.” He swipes away a tear making a hot track down Hongjoong’s cheek. “Someday I hope I can do the same for you.”

Hongjoong holds Yunho’s wrists just to feel the skin to skin contact—an anchor against the tide of feeling too much all at once and the scathing heat of the connection trying to make itself known even in the dream. “I want that, too. I want to love you more than anything. I want what everyone else craves without feeling like if I give in I’m somehow _ giving up _.” He shudders when Yunho touches their foreheads together. “And I want Jimin to get better so I can make fun of her gangly teenage growth spurts and watch her get married off and have kids of her own.”

“Obviously I can’t make that happen because I’m not a doctor or a miracle worker,” Yunho whispers in the infinitesimal space between them. Hongjoong whimpers, hating that Yunho is right. Yunho quiets him with a soft kiss to the edge of his mouth. “But what I _ can _ do is be here waiting for you to find the courage to break away from whatever is holding you back from being happy with yourself...and with _ me _.”

“That’s not fair to you though,” Hongjoong says, “You can’t just wait for me forever.”

“For _ you _ I could wait a lifetime.” Yunho says severely. “San tries to set me up on dates with guys he knows but I always make an excuse not to show up. I’ll continue to find excuses until he gives up.”

Hongjoong focuses on the scar on Yunho’s cheek. “Please don’t. You shouldn’t put your life on hold for someone as shitty and awful as me.”

“Maybe so, but I want to.” Yunho pulls him close, nearly into his lap, and secrets another small kiss to his mouth—to his cupid’s bow, the tip of his nose, and each eyelid besides. “I’ve only ever wanted to fall in love with you and I _ have _. No one else will ever compare.”

Hongjoong leans into the sweet pressure of Yunho’s mouth and holds tight to the unreal texture of Yunho’s sleeve. “I want to remember these dreams so badly...”

Yunho’s next words get drowned out by a shrill beep, then another, and another, until Hongjoong is blinking awake to the notice of his stop and his phone lit up with a long line of texts from his mother demanding to know where he’s at.

**\--------------**

Hongjoong, still tired despite his nap on the train and emotionally wrung out from his visit to the hospital, finally decides to check his phone when it vibrates for what seems like the millionth time in less than an hour once he’s back in his room.

‘_I saw your latest tv spot about your mom’s new book_,’ one text reads followed by an oddly pointed, ‘_you looked happy._’

He scrolls through several more like it with a grimace. Seungho has gotten incredibly clingy almost to the point of possessiveness ever since Hongjoong had found out about the malformed mark on his back. He’s still a little sore on the subject. Seungho had probably seen it plenty of times before Hongjoong even knew it existed and decided not give him a friendly warning. A simple, hey there’s a mark on your back, did you know? Nothing. The constant biting at the notches of his spine makes more sense in hindsight.

His stomach roils and it’s not just because the connection to Yunho is thrumming like a cat’s purr behind his navel. The latest messages are downright _ scary_.

‘_Saw that Yunho guy at a cafe_’

‘_He looks weak, no wonder you wouldn’t want to touch him LOL_’

‘_Want me to say something to him to leave you alone? Maybe if he stops hanging around your mom will give up this insane media frenzy she’s starting_’

Seungho picks up on the second ring.

“Hey babe,” he husks over the connection. “Back from your dad’s building?”

“The hospital,” Hongjoong corrects out of habit. “I’m back. Just checked my phone too, what's with these messages?”

“Just playing around,” Seungho laughs. “But that dude is seriously scrawny I was kind of grossed out just looking at him.”

Hongjoong blinks. Yunho may be many things but scrawny and unattractive were not even in the same ballpark of adjectives Hongjoong would use to describe him.

“That’s a little…”

“You agree, right? Dude’s nasty,” Seungho stresses with an edge to his voice that makes Hongjoong’s skin prickle with goosebumps. “Someone should make him leave you the fuck alone already.”

“Seungho-yah—”

Seungho talks over him. “What are you doing tonight? Minsi is going on a retreat so we’ll have the apartment to ourselves for the next week and a half if you want to get a head start.”

“Tempting,” Hongjoong says carefully. Goddamn, had Seungho always been this needy? Had his voice always grated on Hongjoong’s nerves this much? He shivers. Maybe the real question should be had Seungho ever been this angry and _ jealous _ at the fact Hongjoong has a soulmate who isn’t hard on the eyes. “How about we meet at the library and go from there?”

He can almost see the scowl taking over Seungho’s otherwise chipper face, square jaw tensing from muscles jumping in his cheek. “The library,” he deadpans.

Hongjoong closes his eyes and envisions closing this chapter of his life surrounded by books. Neutral ground. “Yeah, I’ve got some work to turn in tomorrow and I need to use the copiers.” 

“Oh!” Seungho’s tone is brighter now, _ eager_. “Sure! When do you want to meet up? I took off from work already just in case you were free.”

Hongjoong grimaces and mouths ‘what the fuck’ at the ceiling as if it’s going to offer up an explanation for the bizarre behavior. Jesus christ, there’s being a good boyfriend and then there’s...whatever it is Seungho is trying to do. It's like he's trying to smother him to death with affection Hongjoong doesn't want or need.

“Give me two hours and then head that way? I really need a shower after being at the hospital all day.”

He hangs up before Seungho can finish his excited “Oka—” and drops his phone down to the floor. Being single is preferable to this any day.

Seungho is a silent pillar through the entire awkward conversation hidden between books about historic pottery and guides to navigating Windows ‘97.

“I’m sorry, Seungho-yah,” Hongjoong says deeply apologetic, “I enjoyed our time together, but I just really need to buckle down and focus on getting through this semester without any more distractions than I already have with my mother’s newest book campaign. You understand, right?”

Seungho clenches his jaw so tight Hongjoong can see the muscles bulge in his neck. For the first time since they’d met, Hongjoong is honestly somewhat afraid of what the man could potentially do to him if he decided to put those muscles to violent use.

“I see,” Seungho says darkly. Angry. “I hope you’re satisfied with your choice,” he adds in a tad ominously before stomping his way out of the library with a stifled curse. 

Hongjoong waits until the dark of his hair disappears beyond the clear glass doors of the library’s entrance before he blows a gusty sigh of relief. He’s going to miss having easy access to someone to fuck him brainless and stupid. He’s not going to miss the way Seungho was starting to cling a little too hard, a little too greedy for more than Hongjoong was willing to put into their sexual relationship.

Leaning against the stacks of books, surrounded by the smell of old paper and desperation sweat from freshmen learning the hard way you can’t put studying off to the last minute anymore, something strange happens. Hongjoong blinks and to one side of his vision he can make out the outline of a cup of coffee being poured into a sink overlaid on the shelves in front of him. Long _ familiar _ fingers hold the cup in one hand and a rag in the other.

Hongjoong can feel his legs shaking and has to sit down to keep from toppling over the stack of unused ‘Your Guide to Windows ‘95!’ being repurposed as makeshift step stools. He blinks again and the hands are paused mid-cleaning. If he concentrates—if he stares intently at the phantom imagery—he can hear a faint and confused whisper of his name.

“Bruh, are you shitting your pants over a midterm too?” Someone sympathetically asks, snapping Hongjoong out of this—this—whatever the fuck just happened. “And I thought highschool was killer, this shit is the _ worst _.”

Hongjoong nods at the guy half buried behind an armload of texts. “Really...really the worst,” he manages to croak before he stands back on trembling legs to stumble back into the relative safety of daylight. Away from the books. Just—_ away _.

The connection behind his navel, and the mark on his back, both begin to burn as if a hot poker is centimeters away from branding his skin.

**  
** ****

**\--------------**

Still somewhat unnerved by the near merging of his and Yunho’s conscious minds, Hongjoong buries himself in his schoolwork until he’s two months ahead in nearly every subject. It helps to take his mind off of, well, nearly everything. Seungho. The dreamless sleep he’s been getting. The kids back at the hospital undergoing invasive surgeries nearly every other week. The way he can just make out the size and shape of Yunho in the spaces where his eyes are no longer oriented like a strange form of acute onset schizophrenia. 

He ferries himself to the suite of empty offices when the visual hallucinations get to be too much in his own home, especially when he can hear his mother’s conference calls with editors and radio staff trying to plan out the schedule of Hongjoong’s soulmate reveal. Within a week, she’s telling one of the investors, three days at the least but they’re waiting for someone. He won’t allow himself wonder who or for what.

**honkhonk** [7:26 PM]  
At the office if you want to keep me company  
I know ur troupe is in town until at least sunday

**woo** [7:34 PM]  
have company of my own  
would it be alright if i bring them??

**honkhonk** [7:36PM]  
if it’s yunho then no

**woo **[7:48 PM]  
it’s san and mingi…):

**honkhonk** [7:49 PM]  
ah  
Pick up booze on your way in then  
i’ll save you

**woo** [7:54 PM]  
ily 

It takes them half an hour to arrive, by which time Hongjoong has seen the formless shadow of Yunho dancing to an unknown tune in the corner of his eye three times and is debating running headfirst into the nearest patch of drywall to see if it will make his brain reset.

“Yo!” Mingi greets when the trio make their grand entrance. He’s got two bottles of shit-tier soju in his left hand while he holds the right up to his eye in a v-shape. “Did you miss us?”

San bats at Mingi’s chest with a laugh and Hongjoong can’t help but notice the way Wooyoung hastily looks away before he’s bouncing over to Hongjoong’s desk and propping himself up on the corner. “Hi, hyung. Sorry in advance for those two.”

“Hey!” San whines, indignant. “What did I do?”

“The real question is: what _ haven’t _ you done?” Hongjoong laughs, discreetly touching the edge of Wooyoung’s fingers in a show of solidarity. He hopes it helps. “And please tell me you’ve brought more than two bottles for the four of us.”

“Duh,” Wooyoung giggles and rolls his head to the side. “San, go grab the bags from the entrance would you? Mr. Choi will give me the stink-eye later if he finds them.”

San shivers in dramatic fashion. “That guy gives me the heebie-jeebies.” 

"That's what I'm always saying!" Wooyoung half-yells. "And Hongjoong always ignores me because he's a butthole."

Mingi blows a raspberry into the air. “Nah, that dude just _looks_ tough, kinda like the guards around the palace in England. You can do whatever you want around him but he’s not going to actually _ do _ anything.”

“Uh—” Hongjoong gapes.

“You know they are allowed to fucking break your ribs with the end of their rifles if you get too close, numbnuts,” San continues over him. “Try and flick spooky bodyguard man’s nose and find out for yourself.”

Mingi pouts. “No thanks.”

Wooyoung laughs, but even to Hongjoong’s ears it sounds sad and pitchy—like maybe he’s been forcing it too often for too long and forgotten how to do it properly. Hongjoong misses it. Watching San and Mingi gripe at one another, Hongjoong wishes he could dislike either of them but he can’t. They’re _ funny_, for one, and decent people, for two. San might have a few screws loose for leaving Wooyoung to wait in the wings while he sows his wild oats or whatever it is he’s doing, but Hongjoong can’t find it in himself to hate him. And Mingi is just a nice guy all around, someone that just wants to have fun despite his red soul mark glaring bright at the base of his ear.

The four of them demolish a hefty seven bottles of cheap soju in less time than it took for them to make the commute over. Mingi wobbles at one point and goes careening into San’s lap were he very obviously feigns sleep in an effort to cajole cuddles out of his...fuck buddy? Boyfriend? Wooyoung hadn’t really mentioned what the two were doing but Hongjoong can guess. 

“Something is still missing,” Wooyoung whispers sadly against his neck when San has dragged Mingi to the lobby and bundled the both of them into a cab home. “It has to be something wrong with me. Maybe I just want too much.” He sniffs, barely audible. “Maybe I’m just not soulmate material.”

Hongjoong, not knowing what else to do to convince Wooyoung otherwise, threads his fingers through Wooyoung’s own and positions his face to leave a kiss to the corner of his friend’s mouth. “You’re worth so much more than being the side piece to a soulmate who doesn’t love you. In another life, you know I would have picked you out of a lineup of a thousand others, right? Don’t let San bring you down when you should be sitting at the top of some lucky guy’s pedestal.”

Wooyoung leans in for another kiss, dead on this time and so familiar Hongjoong feels a wave of nostalgia wash over him. Wooyoung smiles wan when they separate yet doesn’t go far. “In another life, I would have told you to move in with me instead of being a coward and breaking up with you just because your mom is a terrifying nightmare creature.”

Hongjoong laughs into the thin space between their lips. He can almost taste the soju wafting on Wooyoung’s breath. “Wasn’t really a breakup if we weren’t actually dating.”

“True.” Wooyoung nuzzles their noses together tender sweet. “Should have made that more clear too.”

“Too late now,” Hongjoong notes with wry amusement. He runs his free hand up the length of Wooyoung’s chest until he can dip his fingers into the gap of his collar. “Hey, do you...do you want to recreate that last night together? Without the screaming rage demon this time.”

Wooyoung laughs and laughs and laughs, bright this time and nothing like the horrible tiny thing he’d been letting out earlier. Hongjoong laughs with him, happy to hear it again after what feels like eons without it. “Do you even _ have _ anything here we could use?”

“Condom and a lube packet are in my wallet,” Hongjoong tells him, smug. He presses his lips over the small mole beneath Wooyoung’s eye. “Always hafta be prepared.” Wooyoung leans into the token of affection with a hum, runs his hands over the dips in Hongjoong’s stomach and digs his nails against the fabric over Hongjoong’s legs.

Hongjoong can feel the hesitation in Wooyoung’s touch and adds, “You can call me San if you want.”

Wooyoung’s fingers spasm and his whole body goes rigid. “Really?”

“Really, really,” Hongjoong whispers. He thumbs over the pulse in Wooyoung’s neck going ninety-to-nothing. “I’m not your boyfriend, I won’t get jealous.”

Wooyoung’s breath goes ragged. He bites at the edge of Hongjoong’s jaw and leaves a mark there with his teeth, no doubt a deep red cluster of imprints in his wake. Hongjoong lets him, unconcerned with whatever Wooyoung wants to do to his body because this is the least he can do for him. If San is going to treat Wooyoung like a dainty maiden he’s not allowed to touch, then Hongjoong will be here to let Wooyoung roughly fuck his frustrations about it into him. Wooyoung leaves a harsh kiss to Hongjoong’s mouth before backing up enough to give him room to maneuver, face flushed red and eyes darkened with lust. “Okay.”

**\--------------** ****

His dreamscape is wavering and dark. He’s not quite sure where he is other than a building somewhere in the world with shadow people walking hurriedly to-and-fro when the walls aren’t shifting in and out of view. 

“San told me you broke up with that Seungho guy. I don't know whether I should feel happy he's gone or guilty for being jealous about him in the first place,” Yunho says beside him. He’s impossibly small and impossibly young sitting next to Hongjoong with his arms curled around his knees on a bench that has materialized out of nowhere beneath them. Yunho is maybe six or seven, young enough that his limbs aren't nearly two times the size of Hongjoong's own like in the real world. Yunho sighs and buries his mouth against the curve of his knees, almost withdrawn into himself. “You know, I only ever wanted to meet my soulmate like in the movies. Just...just the fact that somewhere out there is someone perfect for me in every way.” Shadows caress Yunho’s cheeks here and there with long tendril fingers and he shivers. Hongjoong feels sick. “I’d find myself thinking: someday _ someone _ will get me out of this place.”

Hongjoong tries to make a sound but finds himself mute. Yunho, this childlike version of himself with a scar still fresh on his cheek, gazes up at him tiredly. “I hoped it was going to be _ you_.”

‘_I’m sorry_,’ Hongjoong mouths when his voice still remains a mess of broken vocal chords. ‘_I’m so sorry for all of this._’

Yunho shakes his head and rests most of his imaginary weight against Hongjoong’s side. “I love you. I wish that was enough to make you see me.”

They stay in a quiet huddle. Sometimes the landscape shifts to something recognizable: the hospital his father owns, the backseat of a ruined car, the mesh in the back of a police cruiser. When it gets to be too much, Yunho slips his much smaller hand into Hongjoong's own to clutch at him like a lifeline only—only the vine is gone. Yunho's fingers and his arm are blank, sickeningly blemish free. Hongjoong swipes his thumb in the places he remembers the furl of a shy fern used to be and it's as if every pushed away emotion, every guilty glance behind stage curtains, every ounce of stubborn pride leaves in one instantaneous rush. Yunho is meant to be covered in marks—in Hongjoong's claim—this blank slate is nothing short of a nightmare.

"I want to see you," Hongjoong finally manages to scrape out through his taut vocal chords though it's tantamount to gargling glass even in the dream. "I want to see you _all the time_."

Yunho presses his mouth into a thin line to hide a smile and laces their fingers together. The black tendrils of a malformed vine start to slowly inch their way up his arm again, except this time they extend over Hongjoong's own knuckles to match. "Then you know where to find me."

He shakes his head. "But I always forget. Even when I don't want to, I always wake up like nothing has ever happened between us."

"That's okay," Yunho whispers back. The landscape takes on the shape of the darkened back alley where they first met. Raindrops hover midair but the dream feeds him the sound of water hitting the sloped metal awning above their heads. Yunho is no longer small and meek. He's the tall, dark, and handsome Hongjoong met all those months ago. Familiar. The vine continues its slow trek up Hongjoong's arm and the desperation to finally touch Yunho for real hits him like a truck. "Maybe someday you won't. It could be eighty years down the road and I'll still be here to remind you."

"Why?" Hongjoong hides his face into Yunho's chest, imaginary though it may be his brain still enjoys the feedback loop of invisible musculature against his cheek. "Why are you so willing to wait for someone that's not a sure thing?"

"Because I love you," Yunho says simply, cupping the back of his head with his free hand. "Because I'm fairly sure you love me too, it's just going to take you a little longer to figure out in the real world."

Hongjoong wakes up.

And _ remembers_.

He only just makes the stumbling trip from under Wooyoung's weighty limbs to the employee bathroom to gag and gasp and lose everything he's eaten in the last ten to twenty-four hours in the toilet. His fingers still faintly tingle where the imaginary vine had started to grow. Yunho. He dryheaves again. Fuck, _Yunho. _He's made his soulmate wait for so long and for what? Fear? Pride? His mother? The respect and attention of his father? Family that only cared about him when it was convenient for them to acknowledge his presence? Screw them. _Screw all of them_. 

Hongjoong slides down until he's sobbing into the dusty floor of the bathroom. Every dream he'd forgotten is trying to slam its way into the forefront of his brain and it _hurts. _He can remember the way Yunho's nose scrunches on a laugh. He'd never allowed himself to look that long before but now it's like he could describe it in picture perfect detail down to the pores in Yunho's skin. He chokes on the memory of the orphanage and the cascading sounds of the car crash that ruined so much, and shakes at the memory of a kiss that wasn't even real. It takes him a long time to find the strength to move after such an intense revelation, but when he does, it's to hastily throw on his clothes from the night before that smell like stale beer and sweat and digs around for his phone. It's just after two in the morning. He has ten missed calls and thirty-seven texts from his mother spewing vitriol for not answering which isn't new and is mostly ignorable.

Yunho's name is still labeled _DON'T._ Capital letters and all.

If he concentrates, in the corner of his vision he can just barely make out the outline of Yunho's back hunched over the tiny table in his living room trying to cram for an exam that Hongjoong knows, without really knowing Yunho's schedule, isn't for another two weeks. He bites his lips, giddy, and hovers over the name in his phone trying to work up the nerve to call Yunho for real and just...talk. Confess. Maybe find his way to Yunho's apartment after a shower and a change of clothes so they could finally touch and his back could stop feeling like someone is trying to brand him with hot pokers every time they exist in the same fifty foot radius. 

Hongjoong's hands shake with nerves. Cowardice, Hongjoong finds, is a hard thing to let go when you've clung to it like a defining character trait for almost two decades.

Before he can really do anything or make a final decision, his phone lights up with a new call.

_Hyojung_.

**\--------------**

Hyojung meets him at the entrance of the children’s ward with her mouth clamped in a harsh line and the wrinkles beneath her eyes sunken into deep trenches. She holds his hands tightly when he opens his mouth to ask about her charges. “Jun is—has been in cardiac arrest for the last three minutes. Jimin is in such a delicate state right now that she’s not going to survive the loss, trust me.” Hongjoong stares nervelessly at the stark red thumbprint at the base of Hyojung’s throat and clenches his teeth against a wail of horror. 

Hongjoong nods and without prompting stumbles his way towards Jimin’s room. Her door is still decorated with the handprints she and Yeseul and Jun had slapped against the wood with Hongjoong's help, three colors of paint all blended together at the tips where tiny fingers overlapped. 

The room smells like antiseptic and the acrid stench of stale vomit that’s only recently been cleaned away. There are machines surrounding the edges. Horrible incessant beeping coming from nearly every one of them. At the center of them all is Jimin breathing loud and ragged with a hospital gown and a flimsy heated blanket thrown over the delicate patchwork of her recent surgical stitches. Hongjoong pulls the little rolling stool close so he can at least hover over the side of her bed. It’s pink.

“Hey, Jimin-ah,” Hongjoong whispers at her. “Your favorite oppa has come to visit you tonight.”

The little girl wheezes and says nothing. He wipes his face hastily before the tears have a chance to spill over. He’s not sure she’s self-aware enough to even acknowledge his presence but Hongjoong bulldozes on anyway. “I think...you know the nurses all say you’re getting so much better and stronger everyday. You should show oppa how strong you are tomorrow, yeah? Maybe we can walk down to the cafeteria together and steal ice cream again like we did for Yeseul before she left.”

Jimin stares up at him with her feverish red rimmed eyes, the mark on her bloodless cheek burning bright in a flash before settling down to muted scarlet as the little boy in room 4A flatlines for the last time. There’s a sound like a gunshot when the circus of doctors and nurses try to resuscitate him with the paddles of the defibrillator on the highest setting. Somewhere, in the lobby where they shove visitors maybe, his mother screams and screams and doesn’t stop until someone hustles her into a room with a locked door and a merciful handful of sedatives. Hongjoong wonders if it was Hyojung with her gentle withered hands taking in another wounded soul to cradle and comfort like she had with him so long ago after the crash.

“Oppa.” Jimin struggles to reach his fingers gripped tight to the metal bar surrounding her hospital bed. Her fingers are so small and scarred and tremble hard where they connect. Hongjoong selfishly wishes she’ll be around long enough for him to feel them grow longer and maybe larger than his own, whole and hale. “You have to be brave.”

“I’m no good at being brave, Jimini-ie,” Hongjoong chokes out. Her hand shakes hard enough that her little shoulders nearly jutter out of the gown they have draped over the worst of her sutures. “You know oppa is a big scaredy cat.”

Jimin tries to smile but the effort pulls at the bruised skin of her mouth enough that she stops. “Oppa,” she sucks in a labored breath. It barely lifts her chest. Pneumonia and only one functioning lung will do that to a person, Hongjoong supposes with a detached sense of reality. “He’s gone.”

“Yeah, baby.” Hongjoong smooths away what little fringe is left on her sweaty forehead. He’s intensely thankful Yeseul isn’t here to bear witness to any of this. He wishes he were in Yeseul’s part of the country because he’s not sure he’s going to be any more well equipped to be here himself. “He’s gone to a better place to wait for you.”  
  
Jimin breathes hard. One of the machines monitoring her heart rate beeps ominously. She blinks and a tear slips out. “Do you think he’ll recognize me?”

“Of course he will, baby, of course he will.” Hongjoong bites hard at the inside of his mouth to keep from crying. Or screaming—both. The tang of bitter pennies floods his taste buds and Hongjoong struggles to inhale. “He’s your soulmate. You were _ made _ to be together.”

Jimin blinks again but this time her eyes are the thousand-yard-stare of someone who is no longer in the present. Maybe she’s a month in the past when Jun was still somewhat mobile. Or Maybe Jimin is two weeks ago when she hugged Yeseul goodbye for the last time. Hongjoong touches her cheek gently _gently_ to see if he can keep her grounded. Jimin exhales, “Brave,” and then her eyes are rolling back into her head.

Another machine starts to alarm. Then another. A harried nurse passing by glances in and begins calling out codes and Hongjoong is wrenched away from Jimin’s body starting to convulse, sutures violently coming loose and staining her gown red in thick ropes of color. He can’t look away as they rip off the gown, inject her with god knows what kind of medicine, and roll her to the side to keep her from aspirating her own vomit. The doctor calls for the cart again; this time there is no one here to scream. Not for Jimin. There’s no one here to cry for her and beg her to stay but himself and Hongjoong has never been good at asking favors from higher powers.

Someone—Hyojung, thank god—pulls him into her chest, covers his face with her warm palms to hide him from the unreal vignette in front of him. A nurse holding a clipboard crying down at her watch; the doctor very nearly throwing the paddles of the crash cart into the ground; the heart monitor letting out one last long mournful shriek. Hyojung presses him into a nearby room just in time for him to see the blanket being pulled up and over Jimin’s body and hysterically wonders if her soulmark on the little boy in 4A is changing to stomach churning red or if it’s already a forgotten blemish on dead skin. 

**\--------------**

There’s a hidden chapel on the ground floor of the hospital Hongjoong likes to visit sometimes when he needs to be alone. Hyojung had only been able to sit with him for a scant few minutes before she was called to help deal with the wrecked aftermath of two de—of two…

Hongjoong swipes at his eyes for the umpteenth time in who knows how many minutes or hours or days he’s been sitting here in the pews. He’s already screamed himself hoarse into a pillow he’d pulled from one of the hospitality closets earlier and his throat feels scratched raw from it. Hongjoong has already punched at a concrete pillar in the parking garage until his knuckles bled and cracked to work out the anger over the injustice of it all. Hyojung had found him curled into himself and broken, had only given him a small shake of the head before passing him off to one of the med students doing clinic rounds.

He picks at the too lumpy gauze over his hand and gazes at the statue of Mary at the very back of the small room lovingly gazing down at any would-be congregation like a symbol of matronly comfort. Hongjoong doesn’t find any, not here and not now so soon after—after Jimin and Jun. 

“Be brave,” he whispers at Mary and his voice is a cracked open wound even to his ears. Grief slams its way back into his chest and the tears start to cascade once again.  
  
_ Jimin _ was brave. She’d been cut open with no sign of improvement innumerable times, she’d been introduced to a little boy that made her almost stumble hard enough to rip the delicate patchwork of grafts around her knees and still latched onto him with all the enthusiasm of a girl who never even knew the definition of pain. She’d smiled so wide and so brightly when she introduced her newfound partner in crime totally unconcerned with the feeding tube invading one of her nostrils and Jun’s IV-drip rolling behind them on squeaking wheels. 

The skin of his back itches over his half-formed soulmark. His heart aches. Five miles away to the south—no, the southwest, he corrects—Yunho is in his apartment watering his plants and whittling away the time until his night classes begin. Hongjoong closes his eyes and lets himself feel the connection. It’s like an invisible tether connecting their bodies over the span of miles while making it feel as if they’re in the same room. 

Hongjoong wonders if other people have this same kind of intense connection with their soulmates as he and Yunho seem to share. Maybe they can astral project themselves into their soulmate’s body if the connection is finalized and steady instead of wavering and half-formed like his own.

If he concentrates, he can just make out the shape of Yunho’s fingers touching the soil of an airplane plant to check the humidity. He can hear Yunho’s throaty hum as he mumbles along to some song on the radio Hongjoong knows Yunho can’t remember the lyrics to. He can feel Yunho roll his sleeves up to wash a round of dirty dishes that have been left to rot in the sink for far too long, the faint outline of a black vine around his fingers stark in Hongjoong’s mind’s eye. 

What do people do when they lose their soulmate like Jun or Jimin? Where does the connection lead them? What does severing that link actually _ do_? Hongjoong grips tight to the worn wood of the chapel pew as a wave of nausea flows over him at the mere thought of losing the ability to pick Yunho out of a crowd three towns over. 

Southwest, still standing at his sink, Yunho pauses with a hand flattening the fold of his left sleeve. “...‘Joong?”

When he opens his eyes, the statue of Mary looks down at him with her chipped paint and crumbling plaster clothing and Hongjoong hears, “Be brave.”


	3. dance down the street with a cloud at your feet (You're in Love)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always: pay attention to those new tags at the bottom, note the rating change.....and also the fact we've got one more chapter to go whoops sorry

His phone is dead.

It figures, considering he’s been sitting in this same spot—in this same pew made of gleaming polished oak—for an endless length of time staring up at the Holy Mother as if she’s going to magically cure his ails and soothe the pulsing ache centered in his chest. Hongjoong has slept for minutes in dreamless hellscapes without even the comforting presence of Yunho’s imaginary visitations. He's had time before the events in the ward to grieve in advance, but the reality is still... 

The chapel fills with the sound of feet shuffling down the aisle. He hears rather than sees his father sit beside him and wonders if Beomseok has ever prayed for strength or for steady hands just before an intense and delicate operation.

“Hyojung tells me we lost two little ones yesterday. My condolences,” his father says, gruff. “Maybe now you’ll learn to stop getting so close to the terminally ill and end up in here suffering because of the inevitable loss.” 

He breathes in deep. Hongjoong used to think his father’s voice was something like a safe house. Somewhere he could run and hide and be safe from the worst of his mother's seemingly random fits of rage. Now he knows it’s the same cold and unfeeling cell as his mother’s home where he’s kept like a pet.

He starts laughing. “Dad.” Hongjoong lolls his head back until he can get a look at the pinched thin expression of unease on his father’s face. “Did you know the little girl had a soulmate? Did you know that the soulmate was the little boy who died first? That they still laughed and played and loved each other despite their sickness?”

Beomseok sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. His chin is rough with stubble, and this close Hongjoong can see the nicotine yellow edges of his fingernails. A not-so-new habit, then. Somewhere along the line they had become nothing more than strangers. Acquaintances. It’s a freeing sort of realization that Hongjoong doesn't have to try anymore. There's nothing stopping him from being himself because this man, this _person_, is no longer someone he wants to make proud.

“I work with the heart, Hongjoong, not with psychological imbalances,” his father retorts, then, “Go home.”

“Did you know _ I _have a soulmate?” Hongjoong continues, ignoring the order. “A man. He’s been in the news a few times but Park Misun’s public relations firm has yet to confirm or deny his existence.”

Dr. Beomseok, cardiologist and so unfamiliar, sits rigid as if he’s been shocked with the business end of a cattle prod. “You’d mentioned as much the last time we spoke. And for god's sake don’t say your mother’s name like that. It is unbelievably rude when I know I raised you better.”

Hongjoong turns his face back to the statue of Mary and grins at the sculpted upturn of her mouth. “You didn’t raise me at all.”

“Hongjoong—”

“Kim Beomseok-ssi,” Hongjoong says cheekily despite the doctor’s quietly paling anger. “Do you have _ any _ idea what your wife has been up to lately?”

**\--------------** ****

Outside the gloomy hospital doors, the weather is bright and warm and relentlessly pleasant. Hongjoong soaks in the first rays of the sun he’s seen in god knows how long now—hours, days—wondering how it is that it's _this_ beautiful when he feels so miserable. 

His first instinct is to run. He wants to follow the yanking pull in his stomach until he finds Yunho’s apartment and finally, _ finally _ meet for real. He wants to cry into his soulmate’s shoulder where he feels safest; he wants to hold Yunho’s hands and feel the strength in them instead of the phantom weight of fingers he can't actually touch. All of this is going to happen sooner rather than later, but first he needs a shower and to charge his phone. He needs a _ plan_.

By now Hongjoong reeks of sweat and little like blood from the cuts still scabbing beneath the gauze wrapped around his fists, and he stumbles onto the long train ride home, the short bus ride to his stop, and stares up at the tall building containing his family home as if it’s the last time he’s ever going to see this particular arrangement of brick and cement. It’s the middle of the day, which means he should realistically be in class and Park Misun is busy elsewhere. It gives him enough time to take a hot shower just long enough for his phone to charge half-way and to finally scrub away the clinging scent of sterilized hospital out of his pores. 

One of the books on his shelf is an old edition of Don Quixote, leather bound and edged in gold foil. Right after he’d turned sixteen, when the first handful of hopeful job applications were denied—after being caught with _ Wooyoung—_he’d spent three hours carving out a space in the middle of those old yellowed pages and stuffed as many bills as he could get his hands on in the new hollow. It’s not much, not in comparison to his parents’ wealth, but it will be enough for a down payment on an apartment somewhere cheap or an extended stay at a hotel, so he stuffs the fistful of cash into the side pocket of a duffel bag and begins piling clothing after them.

“Come on, come on,” Hongjoong bites out at himself when his clumsy hands tremble and drop his clothes to the floor. “Get it together, Hongjoong, there’s no _ time_.”

Misun’s office is luckily unlocked and Hongjoong determinedly rifles through the stacks of paperwork in search of his original contract. She’s got stacks and stacks of potential scripts organized on her desk, but his real target is the large filing cabinet she supposedly keeps her tax and business records. He keeps his ears open and his muscles tight in case Misun comes home unexpectedly early and he has to bolt out of her space undetected. 

His contract is filed under a tab with his name, along with his legal papers and his bank account numbers. He slides the whole of them into a manila envelope pulled from her desk and hesitates. Somewhere in this cabinet are Yunho’s contracts and waivers, but finding them may take time he doesn’t have and Hongjoong isn’t sure the risk is worth the reward. Hopefully removing himself out of the picture will more than likely remove Yunho as well, so he takes his envelope, now sealed, and slides it close to his laptop for safe-keeping.

All packed and ready to leave, Hongjoong finally checks his phone and finds it lit up with messages and missed calls from Wooyoung and, bizarrely, San, along with the usual tidal wave of bullshit from his mother. 

Hongjoong ignores all of it in favor of thumbing down to Yunho’s contact and hitting ‘call’. For the first time since they’d met, or even before when Yunho was still an unknown entity making Hongjoong fall all over the place, his hands are rock steady.

Yunho’s voice is thick with sleep when he answers on the fourth ring. “‘lo?”

“Hi,” Hongjoong says, breathless, delighting in the way Yunho sucks in a breath like he’s been punched, obvious that he hadn’t looked at his caller ID when he answered the call. “Hi, Yunho.”

“Hongjoong, what—you never call,” Yunho flounders. Hongjoong can hear the rustling of bedsheets and tries to imagine himself there with him, cradled in Yunho’s arms hidden away from the rest of the world. “What’s—um—”

Hongjoong takes mercy on him—on them _both_. "I know it's middle of the afternoon, but..." He clears his throat, "it's a nice night for an evening, don't you think?"

He closes his eyes waiting for Yunho to make the connection, heart pounding seconds that seem endless. He can almost picture Yunho’s eyes beginning to widen even without the strangeness of their connection trying to project the image behind his eyelids. “Wait, shit, does this mean—Hongjoong, do you remember?”

Hongjoong laughs, throaty from repressed tears, “I remember. I remember _ all of it _ and I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long.” He crouches low to take hold of the strap to his duffel just to give himself something real to cling to as an anchor. “I’ve _ missed _ you.”

Yunho whines, already starting to cry thick hiccuping sobs into the receiver. “_Fuck_. Fuck, I’ve been waiting so long to hear you say that to me, I—where are you? Please, I want to see you.”

“Just text me your address.” Hongjoong shifts the hefty duffel to his shoulder and leans to cradle his briefcase with his laptop and his documents and his microphone to his chest. He’s got money for a cab ready to go and enough of his mother’s jewelry stuffed into one pocket he could conceivably bribe them to speed. “I think it’s about time I come to you.”

**\--------------**

Later, Hongjoong will remember the cab ride to Yunho’s apartment in fits and starts: the driver’s face when Hongjoong offered him a diamond ring worth the equivalent of four months' salary if the guy ran a few lights; the way he can see Yunho pacing in his apartment between the flashes of buildings through the window; how his whole body shakes from nervous excitement. Someday he’ll encapsulate the wonder of finding Yunho, of finding _ home_, into a song for everyone to hear. As it is, he can barely parse the series of events that takes him from standing at the curb to tumbling up the steps to Yunho’s apartment complex on shaking legs. He’s like a newborn fawn, at any moment his legs are going to buckle and he’s going to go falling back down to the concrete flooring like he’s got lead in his pockets. 

Before he can even think to press the buzzer, Yunho is there, opening the door with red-rimmed eyes and the muscles in his neck visibly jumping from the strain of not immediately reaching forward to drag him into his apartment—to finally fucking _touch_ him. Hongjoong’s heart stumbles in his chest almost as hard as the way his knees try to jerk themselves out from under him.

“You’re here,” Hongjoong says as if he wasn’t already fighting to stand still from the tug behind his navel—as if Yunho hadn’t texted him the address less than twenty minutes ago with hands shaking almost as hard as Hongjoong’s whole body. “Can I come in?”

“Please,” Yunho shakily answers and sidesteps out of the way for Hongjoong to shuffle inside. 

Yunho’s studio apartment is cramped but welcoming. He’s arranged greenery in clay pots around the largest windowsill, a comfortable plush chair situated against a wall with blankets and throw pillows softly illuminated by a single freestanding lamp. It's nothing Hongjoong hasn’t seen before either in his dreams or through their connection. Instead of offering him a place to sit, Yunho stops in the middle of his entryway.

“This is as far as I can go right now,” Yunho admits. “I’m sorry, the pull is just—it’s too strong. If I move then we’re going to slam into each other and I still don’t know where you stand on that front.”

Hongjoong can tell by the full body tremor and the white knuckled grip Yunho has on the very edge of his sweater. “Yeah.” Hongjoong breathes in. His own feet slide forward almost of their own volition. “About that.” 

“Yes?”

“I want to touch you,” Hongjoong blurts, then continues, mortified at the slow smirk spreading across Yunho’s face. “Not like _ that_, I meant—I want to finally stop the constant push-pull by finishing what we started. I want to finish the marks.” Hongjoong twists his fingers around each other out of nervous habit waiting for Yunho’s response. 

Yunho visibly chews the inside of his cheek. “Are you sure about this? There’s no going back once we touch.”

“I know,” he whispers. “Trust me, I _know._”

Yunho says nothing as he holds a palm opened flat between them. It’s trembling, just a little, and on certain shakes Hongjoong can just make out the thin tendril of the black vine winding its way from the edge of Yunho’s ring finger up towards his bicep hidden beneath the soft cotton of his favorite yellow hoodie. 

“Whenever you’re ready,” Yunho says back just as quietly. “No rush.”

Hongjoong...believes him. Not once during this whole ordeal—which he is man enough to admit is his own doing—has Yunho tried to pressure him into something they’re not. Yunho has never once tried for anything more than to be acquaintances that sometimes share dreams, careful to keep his distance when Hongjoong couldn’t remember them. Not even when they were so close to being pulled together like magnets in the cramped backroom of his mother’s gala. Not when Hongjoong was so adamant on running away.

Yunho’s next inhalation is loud in the quiet of the apartment. 

“I’m ready.” Hongjoong squares his shoulders even as a last trickle of fear slides down his spine. He drops his duffel to the ground with a muted thump of fabric, crouching to place his computer bag on top gently without breaking eye contact. “Jeong Yunho. My name is Kim Hongjoong,” he lifts his own quaking hand to hover awkwardly over Yunho’s fingers, and it’s a bit like holding two magnets just barely apart, the connection doing its best to try and force them together only just held back by their shared force of wills. Almost like standing at the edge of a cliff on a windy day waiting for that last rush of air to send them hurtling toward the ground below. “Sorry to bother you, but I believe I’m your soulmate.”

The first touch of skin to skin feels like an electric current. It feels like a lightning strike. It feels like falling off that very same cliff and landing in the middle of a thunderstorm

Yunho must see something there where their hands connect because he starts laughing and Hongjoong should probably be taking it in himself, except he can’t seem to look away from the happy curve of Yunho's cheeks and the sudden shine misting over his eyes. There’s a song there, too.

“Hongjoong,” Yunho says and the sound alone is enough to make Hongjoong’s knees wobble precariously. "_Look_.”

Hongjoong doesn't have to because he's immediately distracted by the slowly growing tendril of a black vine snaking its way up the skin of Yunho’s neck from beneath his shirt. He’s enraptured by the thick tattoo culminating in the full bloom of a colorless chrysanthemum in the middle of Yunho’s throat butting up against the underneath of his chin. It reminds him of the ring of blackened skin around Yeosang’s adam’s apple.

Hongjoong watches half-dazed as the edge of a petal flashes red with the press of his finger. Yunho grabs it with his unoccupied hand, threads their fingers together tight, and Hongjoong feels the connection like a pulse. 

Over his knuckles, the vine tattoo he’d seen on Yunho’s arm extends between their clasped palms as if it’s growing—as if it’s taking root.

“Oh.” Hongjoong can feel the tattoo slowly crawling its way up and over his biceps, around his back, down to his chest to bloom in the space above his heart. “_Oh_. I’ve been really stupid, haven’t I?” 

Yunho laughs, brittle. “Only a little bit.” Yunho leans down until he can rest their foreheads together. “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

Even this small amount of contact feels electric. Hongjoong closes his eyes, basks in it. 

“Everyone is going to find out soon enough anyway,” he sighs. “I’m pretty sure one of the media companies following me around had a guy stationed outside your apartment who saw me fall up the staircase to your door.” His next inhale is the stutter stop of a backfiring engine because Yunho is softly, delicately rubbing their noses together. “Sorry in advance.”

Yunho shrugs. Hongjoong only knows by the way their linked hands rise and fall with the shift of Yunho’s arms. “It’s fine. I’ve already accepted anything to do with you is going to be a front pager.” 

God, he really doesn’t deserve to have someone so understanding and patient as his soulmate. How many times has he run away? How many times has he essentially insulted Yunho’s worldview just because his parents weren’t picture perfect models of happiness? 

Over the rush of adrenaline making his blood pound in his ears, Hongjoong can just make out the tinny sound of music filtering in from a back room and the ever present hum of traffic. He wonders how many people in their cars are listening in to his mother’s talk show waiting for the reveal of his soul connection right now and realizes he could not give less of a fuck if he tried. 

“I’m sorry for being an asshole and avoiding you,” Hongjoong finally whispers and shifts until he can press his face into the crook of Yunho’s neck—the safest place he knows he can hide away in. “I’m sorry for making _ you _ avoid _ me_. I’m so sorry, Yunho.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to keep apologizing. I forgave you a long time ago anyway.” Yunho tucks his chin against Hongjoong’s ear. “You were just scared. That's completely understandable.”

“I don’t think being scared of touching you is enough of an excuse for the shit I pulled, but thank you all the same.” Hongjoong giggles helplessly against Yunho’s collarbones. 

Yunho laughs with him before gently trying to extricate his fingers from Hongjoong’s tight hold. Which would be _ fine _ any other day, but just imagining the loss of contact makes panic seize control of Hongjoong’s muscles and he grips Yunho’s hands harder to keep him from leaving. 

Yunho stops, though his fingers remain slack in Hongjoong’s grip. “Hyung?”

“Sorry,” Hongjoong groans, embarrassed by his body’s betrayal, “Sorry, I just—give me a second.”

“I can be persuaded into giving you two,” Yunho offers magnanimously. 

“Ha. Ha. He’s got _ jokes _ this one,” Hongjoong grouches without heat. He has to will each and every one of his fingers to unclench as if he’s slowly pouring oil onto old rusted hinges. By inches, he releases his hold on Yunho’s fingers enough that Yunho can slip free, though he doesn’t immediately shift away. One huge hand cups the back of his head and Hongjoong shivers, has to forcibly swallow back the shameful whimper trying to fly out of his mouth. 

“Hey, let’s go sit down. I don’t know about you but my legs are about to give out.” Yunho punctuates the statement with a scrape along his scalp that Hongjoong can’t help but to lean into like a cat.

“Okay.”

“Alright.” Yunho’s shoulders quiver with repressed mirth. “You’re going to have to stop hiding in my chest first.”

Hongjoong never thought he’d miss the angry gravitational pull between them, but as soon as they separate—totally, completely, no skin contact at all—and the buzzing connection is severed, the absence of that metaphorical compass pointing in Yunho’s direction makes tears well up and over his vision. There’s a small area in his mind where he can sort of feel Yunho’s presence if he concentrates hard enough, but without the intensity of the original yank—

“Hongjoong-ah, it’s going to be alright.” Yunho breaks him out of the spiral by wiping the traitorous tears away from his cheeks with his thumbs. “Come on, come sit.”

It’s three steps to get out of the entryway. Five to leave the kitchenette. Twelve to the couch and one step behind Yunho. That one step may as well be a yawning chasm for how bereft and untethered Hongjoong feels sitting next to the man he used to be able to pinpoint like magnetic north.

“This feels weird,” Hongjoong says, nasally from the onslaught of unwanted tears, just to break the silence. 

“It does, but I think it’s a good kind of weird,” Yunho agrees, and maybe he feels the loss of the connection too since he reaches out to interlock their hands in the space between their thighs, resting them against the cushion. “By the way, you’ve got a shitton of carnations on your neck.”

“That figures,” Hongjoong whines and kicks a foot out at nothing just to release some of his pent up nervous energy. “Just my luck my soulmate ends up covering me head to toe in flowers of all things.”

“I’m not sorry,” Yunho says softly, bashful, “I like them.”

“Yeah, well,” Hongjoong starts, stops, and clicks his mouth shut. He avoids Yunho’s piercing gaze to flit his attention around the room. “They’re okay, I guess.” 

Hongjoong feels Yunho’s thumb rubbing absentmindedly along his pointer finger. He captures it, pins it down with his other hand and imagines never letting Yunho go again. Part of him mentally stretches out in satisfaction with the knowledge he _ doesn’t have _ _to_ now. Maybe not ever.

He leans his cheek into Yunho’s shoulder and lets the soft music lull him to half-dazed slumber.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Yunho admits, leaning his mouth against Hongjoong’s forehead, a wet searing heat against his skin. “And I’m sorry about Jimin. I thought you’d have more time together.”

Hongjoong winces and barely resists the urge to curl in on himself from the reminder. “How’d you—how’d you know about that?”

Yunho’s hands develop a fine tremor. “This is going to sound insane, but sometimes I can sort of _ see _you and the last time it happened you were crying into a nurse’s shirt about her. I’m—I’m really sorry for intruding—”

“No, no, it’s okay, don’t be sorry,” Hongjoong interrupts before Yunho can work himself up. “I’ve seen you too. I thought I was just hallucinating.” 

He leans away so he can get a better look at Yunho’s face, at the wide-eyed wonder settling there, and reaches up to trace the deep indent of his scar. The touch of skin to skin buzzes faintly beneath his fingertips. 

“Yunho—”

“I love you.”

Hongjoong chokes, everything he wanted to say flying instantly out of his head to be replaced by the faint rushing sound of an ocean over his ears, blood pumping too fast and not enough all at once. Yunho grins and Hongjoong can feel the crinkle of his cheek beneath his palm.

“Sorry, I just—I’ve been wanting to say that to you for months now and I finally can.” Yunho secrets a kiss against Hongjoong’s palm, dead center, before pulling away. “But I want you to know there is no pressure to say it back. Not until you're ready, when and _if_ that ever happens.”

Hongjoong takes in the curve of Yunho’s heart-shaped mouth and his scar and the deep dark of his too-trusting eyes and thinks, _ I’m so tired of being afraid._

He shifts until he can swing his weight across Yunho’s lap in the cramped space of his couch, lets the rush of near full body contact wash over him, and, despite the still raw and twinging part of his heart where Jimin and Jun reside, he smiles. Yunho looks at him as if he’s seeing something ethereal, something otherworldly and untouchable by the way his hands flutter around Hongjoong’s waist without touching.

Hongjoong holds his hand against the place where Yunho’s heartbeat is pounding. “I don’t pretend to have the best working knowledge on what actual love is supposed to feel like, not with the way my family treats each other, but, _ Yunho_, I told you I loved you in our dreams. I meant it then,” he focuses on the slow crumple of skin on his soulmate’s chin trying bravely to keep himself from crying, “and I mean it now, too.”

Yunho gets out a stuttering, “Hongjoong,” before he’s leaning forward and burying his face into Hongjoong’s chest, winding his long arms around Hongjoong’s back.

They spend a small eternity curled into one another on the couch in Yunho’s apartment, whispering endearments and shaking apart in each other’s arms. At some point, Hongjoong is going to have to be the adult in the room and extricate himself to leave again in search of reasonable accommodation but...but until then he wants to be here. He wants to lose himself in Yunho’s warmth and his acceptance and his love when Hongjoong has never had any of it. He wants to be greedy and keep Yunho trapped in the circle of his arms. 

It takes some doing, but Hongjoong finally gets enough space between them to look at the wreck of Yunho’s face and finally admit, “I ran away from Park Misun, for good this time, and I’ve put in a few words with a reliable source to spread some interesting information about her backroom dealings.”

“Thank god,” Yunho says. “This means I can stop pretending to be your mom’s number one fan, right?”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong breathes, “It also means she’s going to be gunning for me to come home to help rebuild her image, so I need to find a place to stay out of her earshot.” He traces the petals of the blooming chrysanthemum along Yunho’s throat. “I’m going to see if there’s a hostel—”

“Stay here,” Yunho interrupts. 

“Yunho, don’t you think that’s a little—” Hongjoong hesitates, “A little too soon? I don’t want to take advantage of you. Just ask Wooyoung, I’m bad about doing that to friends. I don’t know if I could stand it if I did it to _ you _ too.”

Yunho pulls him back into his chest by the arms of his hoodie. “No. I’ve spent my life daydreaming about finding my soulmate, _ you_, and living with them until we’re old and grey and wrinkled.” Yunho’s nose is cold where it digs into Hongjoong’s neck, his voice coming out muffled. “If you’re worried about being selfish, then let me do it for you. Stay. With me.”

“But you hardly know me beyond what we’ve shared in dreams,” Hongjoong tremulously whispers against Yunho’s head right over the delicate swirl of his ear. “What if I’m not really what you’re expecting?”

Yunho is silent for a long time. It gives Hongjoong enough time to think through his options. He’s got money along with baubles he could pawn fairly easily, so finding a place to stay shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Worst case scenario he can sleep on Seonghwa and Yeosang’s sad lumpy couch for a week or two while he gets his bearings. His father—Kim Beomseok, he amends—should be finished raising holy hellfire by then. And if not, well—

He knows where the most popular paparazzi hotspots are. He knows he has some credibility being the token son of a beloved actress, hopefully his word holds enough weight to make the media frenzy distract her and leave him alone long enough for him to finally fucking graduate and find gainful employment in an industry he loves. Not the one his mother desperately wants to create for him.

Yunho’s hands are warm where they trail up the length of his back to pull Hongjoong somehow closer to his chest.

“I think you’re too hard on yourself,” Yunho finally murmurs, “Especially now when you’re supposed to be excited about our soulmarks finally getting finished. Just accept the gesture of hospitality and _ kiss me _ already.”

Hongjoong laughs and backs up until there’s enough room for him to grin at Yunho’s pouting expression. The bridge of his nose is turning red. Still perched in Yunho’s lap, he leans down until he can almost taste the pearl pink of his mouth. Hongjoong stops when they’re a scant inch or so away, fists shaking in the material of Yunho’s shirt gripped tight. “Do you want—”

Apparently, Yunho _ does_. Hongjoong leans into the kiss with a muffled groan, the shock of smooth skin against his mouth coupled with the soulmate connection burning bright and relentless where they touch is almost more than he can handle.

Shitty romance movies and dreamy-eyed novels about soulmates could never prepare him for this. Nothing and no one has ever made him feel like _this_. 

“Is this alright?” Yunho pants raggedly in the heated space between them.

“It’s fine,” Hongjoong sighs back, jittery but at the same time more at peace with himself than he has been in a long time. He slowly traces his hands down, then up and under Yunho’s shirt just to feel the twitching of Yunho’s muscles and the staticy buzz of their connection flaring to life beneath his fingertips. “It’s perfect. _You're_ perfect.”

_**\--------------** _

They don’t accomplish much more than softly pressing themselves together before the shrill ringing of his phone’s ringtone interrupts the heated atmosphere. Hongjoong tries to ignore it by sucking Yunho’s bottom lip between his teeth and laving over the full swell of it in his mouth, but whoever it is has decided not to give up after the first call goes unanswered. It’s probably his mother anyway.

“You should probably answer that,” Yunho husks, “Could be important.”

“More important than _ this_?” Hongjoong slides Yunho’s shirt up and over his head, boggling at the intricate network of vines and flora in swirling black loops on Yunho’s chest. “Because I can always call them back.”

His phone rings again.

Yunho kisses Hongjoong’s knuckles and pushes at his hips to give them some room to breathe. “Just get it over with. I should probably get a shower anyway, I’ve been sweating ever since you called me.”

“Spoilsport,” Hongjoong mutters, but does as Yunho asks and is rewarded with a quick kiss to his cheek for digging out the offending device. 

It’s Wooyoung.

_ Shit_. In the whirlwind of remembering Yunho—of Hyojung’s panicked phonecall and the subsequent visit to the hospital to watch Jun and Jimin—  
  
Hongjoong winces. He had completely forgotten leaving Wooyoung to wake up naked and alone in an office building he wasn’t technically supposed to be in.

Wooyoung doesn’t wait for him to start talking, barrels in on him when the line finally connects. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that, right? How many times are you going to run off without telling me what is going on or where you are? I thought you were fucking abducted by your mom’s goons or something!”

All Hongjoong can do is apologize—because Wooyoung is right, he’s always right—and hope Wooyoung loves him enough not to hold it against him. He can hear the shower turn on in the background. “I’m really sorry, Woo. I should have woken you up but I got a call from the hospital and just...there was a lot going on.” Hongjoong pinches his fingers together as a distraction from the reminder. “You’re my best friend and I should have done better by you.”

Wooyoung sighs. “Stop. Don’t—don’t do that. Tell me what happened at the hospital.”

Hongjoong swallows, squeezing his eyes tight against the memory of the last wailing shriek of the heart monitor. “Two of the kids passed. Hyojung called so I could be there for one of them when her parents couldn’t.” 

“Jesus,” Wooyoung breathes, “God, Hongjoong, I’m so sorry. Are you alright? Do I need to come get you from the hospital and take you home?”

“Thank you, but no.” 

It still hurts just thinking about the kids, it will probably always hurt deeply knowing he can’t watch them grow old and have kids of their own. It’s not the first time he’s felt this same gouging ache from the loss, but it’s something he’s learned to compartmentalize with Hyojung’s help back when he was still recovering from the crash and befriending terminally ill children his age. At some point he’ll break down, he’ll cry and scream and grieve all over again, but here, with Yunho, he has a small moment to heal and forget.

“Where are you now? I'll keep you company if you don’t want to be alone,” Wooyoung offers.

“No, no, I’m uh—” The shower cuts off and Hongjoong bites back a grin, wandering away from the couch to drop onto Yunho’s bed while he waits for Yunho to get finished drying off. “I’m not alone.”

Wooyoung groans. “Dude, we’ve been over this: hookups are not the emotional bandaid you think they are.”

“I’m not with a hookup.” Hongjoong flops back against Yunho’s bed that smells faintly of minty shower gel and clean cotton. “I met Yunho.”

The line goes silent for a long time. “Are you serious? Are you fucking serious right now? You’re with _ Yunho_, your _ soulmate _ Yunho?”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong starts giggling, giddy with the jittery relief of telling someone. Yunho comes out of his shower, all steam fresh and pink with a towel wrapped around his waist, and gives him a questioning raise of his eyebrows while towel drying his hair. “I met Yunho. For real this time.” 

Yunho slides his hands up the length of Hongjoong’s arm and squeezes before turning to rummage through his dresser for clothes. Hongjoong twists until he can catch Yunho around the waist with his legs just to hear Yunho laugh—loud and bright and wonderful and not at all in the same tone as that horrid monitor beeping away at the hospital that Hongjoong is dead set on putting out of his mind. At least for today. Just for a few minutes before the pain hits again.

Wooyoung goes pin drop quiet for all of ten seconds before clearly holding his phone away from his face to squeal in excitement. “Are you—have you guys touched? What do your marks look like? Are you happy? Oh my _ god_, Hongjoong!”

“Really, really happy,” Hongjoong replies just as Yunho flops his full weight against Hongjoong’s chest and says, “Hi, Wooyoung!”

“What the fuck,” Wooyoung says faintly, then, “FaceTime me right now, you _ whores_.”

“That would require Yunho to get dressed, so no.” Yunho hides burbled laughter into Hongjoong’s shoulder. “But if you’re free later, want to meet up at the cafe? Yunho has work and I’m still in the process of escaping the Evil Witch of the Waste. Might need your help.”

Wooyoung sniffs as if he’s only just holding back ugly tears. “Only if you promise to show me your marks.”

Yunho pipes up, “That would require Hongjoong to get naked, so no.”

“Oh my god. I hate that I love this,” Wooyoung says cheerfully, “I’ll text you my schedule, you nasties. Love you both.”

Wooyoung hangs up and Hongjoong lets his cellphone hit the floor, already close to dead again. Not that he _ cares _ considering it was a gigantic cockblock less than twenty minutes ago.

Yunho thumbs over Hongjoong’s waist. “Hey.”

Hongjoong leans their cheeks together just to feel them warmed by the heat of Yunho’s shower. “Hi.”

Yunho shifts off of his chest until he’s resting along Hongjoong’s side, thumbs still gently rubbing along the waistband of the sweatpants Hongjoong hastily stepped into on his way out the door. “Can I see your marks?”

“For you? Any time.” Hongjoong loops his arms around Yunho’s neck, smiling into the sweet kiss Yunho drops to his mouth. “I don’t want you to think I’m easy though.”

“Of the many words I would use to describe you, _ easy _is nowhere near one of them.” Yunho runs his fingertips underneath Hongjoong’s hoodie to trace the marks they still haven’t revealed. “It’s not even in the top fifty.”

"Still though," Hongjoong does his best to ignore the memory of his steady line of hookups as Yunho inches his shirt up his belly. "I don't want to go too fast if you're not—"

Yunho cuts him off with a bruising kiss, fingers paused just beneath his navel and digging in harsh. "It's been months, Hongjoong," Yunho reminds him when they separate, panting hot and wet and angry against his mouth. "I have been sharing dreams where I can _see _you without actually being able to fucking _touch_ you and waking up at four in the morning to jack off to the memory."

"Fair enough." Hongjoong shivers. It still feels intimately tender to have Yunho’s skin and his hands and his attention focused on him. Yunho slides his palms all the way up his chest, dragging his top with them until it bunches just under his armpits and the cool of the room makes his nipples pebble. “Keep this up and we’ll both have to take another shower.”

“Worth it,” Yunho growls and begins peeling Hongjoong out of his sweatpants and his underwear inch by inch—pausing here and there to bite against the bloom of different flowers and splotchy leaves.

“_Yunho_,” Hongjoong gasps when Yunho gets him almost fully undressed, hoodie still bunched awkwardly in his pits. He’s not hard, not yet, but so close to it the chill in the room is almost unbearable against his skin. “I—not to ruin the mood, but you know I’ve been with other people, right? Like, multiple.”

"Don't worry, I know." Yunho kicks his towel away, dick standing proud against his stomach, and leans back up to peck his mouth again. “I didn’t expect you to save yourself for me or anything.” Yunho leaves nipping bites from the edge of Hongjoong’s mouth until he reaches the curve of his jaw, trails up the slope to nip gently against his earlobe. "As long as you're here with me _now_, that's all that matters to me. Can I please get on with it now?"

Hongjoong can't help but to stifle a laugh beneath low moan of pleasure. "Carry on, sir."

"Thank you."

Yunho sits back on his haunches with Hongjoong’s legs propped over his thighs so he can trace the long tendrils of the otherworldly marks gently with the very edge of his nails, tickling up Hongjoong’s thighs towards his torso. As much as Hongjoong feared them, having Yunho’s soulmarks covering him from his neck to halfway down his thighs is a relief. He always thought the soulmate connection wasn’t for him—the whole concept of falling for your soulmate something foreign and idiotic, not made for anyone like himself who should know better than to let some cosmic whateverthefuck decide who to love—except being the focus of Yunho gaze like this is—

It’s everything Hongjoong hadn’t known he’d been missing.

“These flowers are beautiful,” Yunho murmurs, folding down to lip his way around the curling fronds of a fern next to his navel. “_You’re _ so beautiful, hyung.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Hongjoong laughs, trembling all over from the drag of Yunho’s hands and his mouth and the wet tip of his tongue over his stomach. Heat is slowly pooling in his groin making his thighs tense and shake with the repressed urge to seek out any kind of friction, something to ease the ache and the teeth clenching want. “Having fun?”

“Yes, lots,” Yunho grins at him extremely pleased with himself and the heinously slow pace he’s setting. “I’d have done this sooner in the dreams if you’d let me.” He punctuates the statement by biting over a collection of hazy stems that look a little like lavender and Hongjoong arches into the sting with a breathy groan. 

“The reality is much better though,” Yunho rasps.

“So much better,” Hongjoong agrees hazily. Finally finding some sense, he reaches up to drag Yunho back up to kiss his mouth, slow and easy, until Yunho is panting wet gasping breaths in the tiny space Hongjoong allows between them. Everywhere he touches is flushed pink, and when he shamelessly kicks his hips up to be mean, Yunho’s cock leaves a sticky line against the skin of his thigh. 

“Please,” Hongjoong moans against Yunho’s mouth and, unlike the time backstage at his mother's publicity event, this time he knows what he wants. “Please fucking touch me.”

“I’ve _ been _ touching you.” Yunho lets his full weight drop against Hongjoong’s front again, dick sliding up along Hongjoong’s own and he inhales a deep gulp of breath from the shock of that heated length bumping up against his cockhead, twitching together under Yunho’s weight. 

Pressed head to toe like this, their marks line up in a way that makes their connection veritably _ burn _ and Hongjoong spends a long shivery moment trying to reorient himself in his body again. Yunho is babbling something dark and hot under his breath that Hongjoong can’t quite parse with the way his skin seems to be lighting up from the inside out. It’s a little like riding a bolt of lightning from cloud to cloud waiting for the inevitable ground strike or riding the undulating crashing wave of a tsunami. Yunho plants a groaning open-mouthed kiss to his shoulder and that’s—

Hongjoong manages an embarrassed stuttering, “Oh, oh, oh,” before he’s digging his nails into Yunho’s back, nearly curling into himself, and coming so hard his body actually quakes with it.

He doesn’t have time to feel any actual embarrassment from losing it without them actually _ doing anything _ because Yunho growls into his ear, backing up give himself room to wedge an arm between them, and jerks himself off quick and dirty using some of Hongjoong’s cum. Ordinarily Hongjoong would _ help _ because he at least has _ some _manners, but his limbs are useless and stupid, refusing to obey his order to stretch out to touch Yunho’s pretty dick or thread his fingers through the dark wiry hair at the base.

Yunho takes the abortive little jerks of Hongjoong’s arm as permission to lace their hands together, and in a quick one-two punch he’s coming in long stripes over Hongjoong’s stomach—sticky lines over the marks on his chest and the bloom of daffodils right above his heart. His soulmate’s eyes are dark and predatory while he pants raggedly above him, roving his free hand through the mess to rub his cum into the biggest patches like a display of possession, greedy. 

Hongjoong hums, basking in the attention. “‘S nasty.”

“No it’s not,” Yunho murmurs and the deep timbre of his voice makes Hongjoong’s skin pebble up again with arousal, fuck. “All of this still feels so surreal. I’ve thought about marking you up so many times—”

“With the soulmarks or with your cum?” Hongjoong teases him, finally shimmying out of his hoodie and dropping it to the floor next to his phone. 

Yunho considers him for a moment before he’s shifting back upright, dragging Hongjoong’s body back into his lap so their hips nearly touch, and takes him into his fist—still throbbing and oversensitive.

“Both,” he settles on and smiles a touch cruelly when Hongjoong bites back a whimper from being touched like this so soon. "Someday I want to mark you up from the inside out. Want to watch you _beg_ me for it."

“I could do that _ now _ if you want,” Hongjoong half-begs while his body involuntarily jerks after each swipe of Yunho’s thumb over the slick tip of him.

Yunho shakes his head, finally releasing his hold on Hongjoong’s spent dick. “Not enough time for that now. We’ll revisit the idea when I don’t have work in two hours and you’ve gotten things settled with your family.”

“It’s a date,” Hongjoong says, grinning when Yunho bites his lips to keep from smiling too hard back. He reaches up with searching grabbing motions. “Come back here and kiss me if we’re not doing anything else.”

“Yes sir,” Yunho replies with a salute before they fall into each other again: all smiles and laughter and jittery post-orgasm high.

_**\--------------** _

Not quite wanting to out himself so totally to the press—just in case the photog propped outside Yunho’s apartment is still there—Hongjoong covers his marks with a thick turtleneck and a long enough coat that the ends fall just over his fingertips. Whatever isn’t covered by clothing is covered with concealer he’d bought months ago when Seungho gave him an unwanted hickey. Thinking back on it now, that should have been a warning sign that Seungho was maybe not the best person to casually buddyfuck when he was bored.

The look Wooyoung gifts him with is both overwhelmed and pissed, which is an interesting combination that mostly ends up resembling a wet and angry cat.

“Can’t believe I came all the way out here and you’re not even going to show me your new marks,” Wooyoung gripes with a pout, arms folded akimbo and slouched in his seat at the same table in the upstairs corner in Yunho’s workplace they'd met up in not too long ago. “_Stingy_.”

“Sorry not sorry,” Hongjoong tells him. “I’m trying to lay low while we wait for the fallout to hit so you'll just have to wait until we're somewhere private.”

Wooyoung taps their shoes together. “What exactly did you do? Like, I understand the leaving home bit, but the hiding out from whatsherface is a little sketch.”

“Well, number one I stole a bunch of her jewelry on my way out the door, so there’s that,” Hongjoong mumbles, grinning when Wooyoung starts smacking at the table in a fit of mirth. “Then I stole all my contracts that she kept locked in her office and informed my dad about what she’s been trying to pull with me by threatening my education. He might not like me very much but he’s always been super vocal about getting a college degree, even if it’s in a field he doesn’t agree with.” He sighs. “Once she gets yelled at she’ll come gunning for me and I have better ammo. Gotta play the waiting game for now and then see what happens.”

Hongjoong leans back in his chair, closing his eyes so he can better concentrate on the steady thrum of his connection to Yunho. It’s not as intense, not like before when he was hellbent on denying Yunho’s existence, but it’s enough that he can almost pinpoint his soulmate pouring two steaming cups of the daily special downstairs and to the right. The longer he focuses, it’s almost as if his own fingers are starting to warm like he’s holding the cup himself.

Wooyoung hums. “You know your mom is all over the radio saying you guys have found your soulmate and are going to show them off at her next event.”

“Of course she is,” Hongjoong groans and runs his palm over his face. “Has she—”

He’s interrupted by the sound of Wooyoung’s phone starting to buzz and watches as his friend hastily pulls it out just to shut it off with a paling fearful look. 

“Woo?”

“It’s nothing, just San,” Wooyoung dodges. “Has your mom what?”

Hongjoong squints at him. “Why are you avoiding San? I thought you liked San. _ A lot_.”

Wooyoung opens his mouth then shuts it with a clack as Yunho finally joins them upstairs. “Hi, Yunho.”

“Hey, man!” Yunho cheerfully greets him before he’s leaning really too close to be subtle and whispering, “Hi, you,” with his mouth just barely caressing the edge of Hongjoong’s ear under the cover of setting down their sugary caffeine order.

Hongjoong’s whole body feels like it’s vibrating on the edge of his seat trying not to jump up just so he can attach himself along Yunho’s front like a limpet and live there forever. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“So fancy,” Yunho agrees and then he’s clearing his throat and saying, “Alright get it out now, Wooyoung.”

“You guys are so adorable I’m going to _ cry_,” Wooyoung bursts out, which is fairly premonitory considering his face is crumpled up in places like he’s fighting back tears. “Oh my god, this is all I’ve ever wanted.”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “Me deliberately interacting with my soulmate?”

“No,” Wooyoung says, voice overfull and thick with choked back tears, “You being this _ happy_.”

“Oh,” he says, hands clenching around his chair so he doesn’t make an absolute spectacle of himself trying to pull Wooyoung into a hug from across the table. Yunho apparently twigs on the idea because he’s circling the edge to pull Wooyoung into his chest and cooing when Wooyoung sniffs.

“Why are you avoiding San?” Yunho asks and changes his hug into a friendly headlock. “He sent me crying emojis over it.”

Wooyoung huffs, tears momentarily forgotten while he attempts to get himself out of the circle of Yunho's arms. “Look, I just—I just feel really awkward, alright?”

Hongjoong props his chin against his fist. “Why?” 

Wooyoung colors and slaps at Yunho’s elbow until Yunho finally releases him and goes back to standing too close to Hongjoong’s side. Hongjoong hooks a finger in Yunho’s apron pocket to pull him closer.

“Uh, does Yunho know about,” Wooyoung pauses, apparently searching for the right words and gives up in favor of making vague hand motions between himself and Hongjoong’s chest. “You know?”

“About—oh!” Hongjoong turns to Yunho. “Hey, Wooyoung has seen my dick multiple times. That okay with you?”

Yunho shrugs. “Why wouldn’t it be? And anyway, I already know because San gripes about it constantly.”

“He did?”

“He does?” Wooyoung echoes, “Wait, _ why_?”

Yunho blinks. “Because you apparently love Hongjoong more than you like San and he's extra pissy about it, obviously.” Yunho drops his voice to a low whisper, “Dude’s crazy jealous when it comes to you.”

“_What_,” Wooyoung says though it comes out a tad shrill. “But he’s dating Mingi!”

Yunho snorts. “Yeah, Mingi wishes.”

“Can we focus back to the original question?” Hongjoong whines. “Tell us why you’re avoiding San!”

Wooyoung gulps. “I don’t know, I think I just felt super guilty for fucking you instead of him.”

“Is that all?” Yunho leans against Hongjoong’s back so he can slide his arms down his chest, professionalism be damned. “Don’t feel too bad. San has a whole lineup of guys he’s slowly working through while he cries himself to sleep about your marks not lighting up or whatever.”

Hongjoong nods. “Yeah, it’s not like he’s the picture of monogamy. Neither are _ you _ for that matter.”

Wooyoung cringes in on himself, hands cupped around his mug to give them something to do. “I know, I know. I can’t explain it, I just...it feels weird.”

Yunho blows out a noisy breath. “Just talk to him, dude, damn.”

“Yeah,” Wooyoung deflates, “Tell me how you two went from being mortal enemies to this lovey-dovey vomit fest.”

Yunho leaves them to it since he has to actually get to work and Hongjoong gives Wooyoung the shortened version, excluding the weird hallucinations. He briefly touches on the hospital, how watching Jimin and Jun made him realize there are some things that can’t be put off or put away. Wooyoung listens, reaching out to hold Hongjoong’s hands once their coffee has gone cold. He’s just describing what it was like to touch Yunho for the first time when his phone starts going off.

San.

Wooyoung gives him the go ahead, so Hongjoong answers on speakerphone. At this time of day the upstairs bookshop is free and clear of anyone else so it should be fine. “What’s up?”

San’s voice is thin and reedy over the line. “Hyung, have you seen Wooyoung? He’s not answering my calls and it’s really, really important I speak to him, like, _yesterday_.”

Wooyoung mimes throat cutting motions. Hongjoong kicks him with a frown but goes with it. “Not lately, but what’s this about? Maybe he’ll answer if I try calling him.”

San sounds manic, half-crazed, when he nearly shouts, “I found our third!”

Hongjoong gapes. “Your what?”

“Our third,” San’s voice starts to shake, “I thought our marks were just fucked up because we’re not compatible, but we have a _ third_, hyung. Please, you have to see if he’ll listen to you.” There’s another muffled voice in the background that Hongjoong can’t quite make out. Wooyoung is sheet white. “His name is Jongho and just—just get Wooyoung to talk to me, I’m begging you. I’m desperate. _ We’re _ desperate.”

_**\--------------** _

Hongjoong finds himself tucked away in a really very nice studio space with all the latest recording equipment and the microphone he’d been drooling over for the better part of six months. His chair is the kind that has _ perfect _ lumbar support. A dream.

“I thought these would go away once our marks were finished,” Hongjoong muses.

“Well, I’m glad they didn’t.” Yunho walks himself into Hongjoong’s lap until he can finagle both legs through the back of the chair, hips flush, and curled forward to cuddle into Hongjoong’s neck with his cheek resting on his shoulder. “I miss you.”

“You’re so needy,” Hongjoong coos, digging his fingers into Yunho’s side until Yunho whines. “We saw each other only a few hours ago when we had to drag Wooyoung into an Uber. Remember?” He runs his hands up Yunho’s back massaging at the weird not quite real sensation of fabric against his fingertips. “Anyway, where’d you fall asleep?”

“The apartment,” Yunho snuggles in closer with a satisfied noise not unlike a cat’s purr. “Had some time before class to grab a nap. Where are _ you_?”

“Library. Really wish I was in this awesome studio though.” Hongjoong twirls them around in the spinning office chair. “By the way, our schedules _suck_.”

“You know what else sucks?” Yunho asks with an exaggerated saucy eyebrow wiggle.

“Not _ you _ if that’s what you were about to suggest.” Hongjoong scrapes his nails down Yunho’s back in reprimand. “I happen to be in _ public_.”

Yunho pouts. “Spoilsport.”

Hongjoong kisses him anyway, long and deep until they’re both breathless and Yunho has a dazed slackness at his mouth. “Good enough?”

“Mmm.” Yunho hides his face again except Hongjoong can see the fiery red tips of his ears and feels extra smug about it. “Hey, do you think other people share dreams like we do?”

“Dunno,” Hongjoong admits. “I’ve never heard of it, but you already know I never cared about soulmates enough to find out anyway. Maybe I should ask Yeosang, he’d probably know.”

“Yeosang would probably just say you smoked bad weed and then try to get all philosophical on you about it,” Yunho says tart. “Or just avoid the subject entirely because feelings give him hives.”

Hongjoong can’t help but to start laughing. “Oh my god, how do you even _ know _ Yeosang to judge him?”

“Wooyoung,” Yunho says simply.

“Ah.” Hongjoong continues to spin them in slow circles even as the room begins to fuzz at the edges. “Yeosang isn’t really like that all the time. He defaults into stoner stereotypes or angsty emo skater punk when he’s nervous or around new people. He’s actually really goofy when you get to know him.”

“Yeah, that’s what Wooyoung says too.” Yunho tips Hongjoong’s face up by his chin to kiss him tender and sweet and delicate. “Think I'm waking up. See you at home later?”

Hongjoong hopes to god Yunho can’t see the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes at the question. _ Home. _The idea of living with someone who actually wants him there in their space is still such a bizarre novelty, Hongjoong keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop—or for Yunho to come to his senses and drop _him_. “Of course. See you.”

Yunho gifts him with the slow bloom of a smile, mouth forming the first syllable of something before he disappears with a pop, and Hongjoong is left alone. The facsimile of the recording room slowly begins to morph into the dark nightmarish scene of the car crash. By now, Hongjoong is used to the scene having been subjected to it so many times it’s no longer the nauseating punch in the gut it used to be. Yunho’s parents are still undefined dark smudges and even the blood that stained the road is mostly a murky colorless shadow.

Curiosity gets the best of him and Hongjoong tiptoes around the scene. He gets up close to the police officers thumbing through the wad of cash to see if he can possibly make out their faces, but he didn’t see them when he was a kid so their faces are all blank flesh toned canvases. His mother is younger here—red mouth, skin smooth before the botox treatments began, and smiling demurely behind her hand while she talks to their driver.

Their _ driver_, who Hongjoong had seen so many times as a child and then promptly forgotten after this incident, is dabbing at his face with a rag, the skin of his hands ashen and pale where they cup over his mouth..._the driver_...

Hongjoong snorts awake to the sound of an alarm screeching at him. Unfortunately, when he thumbs over his phone screen to dismiss the alarm, there’s a message from Seungho. 

**Seungho (maybe don’t answer??)** [4:28 PM]  
I need to speak to you.  
In person.

_**\--------------** _ ****

“Are you going to go?” Yunho asks with his mouth buried against Hongjoong’s throat along the carnations spread out over his jugular while they cuddle close in Yunho’s bed. It’s the first night they’re spending together and Hongjoong is still starry eyed at the simple closeness—at Yunho’s wholesale acceptance of his presence in this space.

Hongjoong considers the ceiling. He hasn’t heard from Seungho since he rudely broke it off in the reference section of the University library and honestly hadn't thought much of him after. 

“I mean, to be fair, I did kind of use him because he was a convenient distraction instead of an actual romantic partner,” Hongjoong admits and flicks at Yunho’s knuckles over the first curling edge of Yunho’s vine mark. “I think I owe him at least one last meetup to apologize if nothing else. We didn’t really...I kind of ended things in a shitty way.”

Yunho hums and gently drops a kiss to his throat. “Whatever you think is best. Just promise to text me how it goes so I don’t worry he’s trying to, like, shank you or kidnap you or something.”

“Oh please, don’t be so dramatic,” Hongjoong laughs and tugs at the sleeves of Yunho’s oversized sleep shirt to pull him in tight against his body. Yunho rolls his eyes but allows himself to be pulled into the cradle of Hongjoong’s hips, lets his full weight drop down until Hongjoong feels closed in and small. “Let’s change the subject.”

“To what?” Yunho yawns, burying his face in Hongjoong’s chest and wiggling his arms beneath his hips in an attempt to mold them together. The marks on Hongjoong’s neck feel like they’re trying to come alive from the proximity. He shivers.

“Mmm, do you think Wooyoung is okay?” 

Yunho hums. “I’m sure he’s fine. You’d have heard something by now if he wasn’t. He and San are probably too busy getting acquainted with their soulmate to think about anything else.” 

Hongjoong traces formless shapes along Yunho’s back. On some passes of his hand he can feel the warm buzz of their connection reaching out, no doubt the marks trying to make themselves known by calling to each other. They both ignore the way Yunho’s whole body trembles the longer Hongjoong palms over certain sections of the marks.

“Has your mom tried to contact you yet?” Yunho finally questions.

Hongjoong grimaces. “No. She might be busy with a press junket I don’t know about and hasn’t noticed shit missing yet. That or dad hasn't threatened to take away his own money train if she doesn't cut it the fuck out trying to force me into her weird acting slash public relations empire.”

"Well, fingers crossed she goes away long enough for you to at least get situated here before she comes knocking down the door."

Yunho’s hands slide up and under the back of Hongjoong’s shirt, and the feel of them against the cornflower mark blazes. Like a banked fire, heat lazily rolls up Hongjoong’s spine, curls into his chest and his stomach. He lets out an involuntary throaty groan, Yunho answering with a cracked moan of surprise when their soulmarks send out electrifying pulses where they touch.

Hongjoong squirms as Yunho places butterfly soft kisses against his throat. “Yunho—”

“Hongjoong,” Yunho says with a grin Hongjoong can feel, mouth stretching wide enough his teeth scrape just barely over his neck. “About what I was going to suggest in our dream earlier…”

There are few things he loves more than sucking dick—Yunho, music, and maybe Wooyoung ranking somewhere just above the cut—so when Hongjoong says, rough, “Let me,” while trying to manhandle Yunho to his back, he means business. Yunho goes with the soft pushing, sweetly compliant, and muffles a squeak when Hongjoong wastes no time in shoving Yunho’s shirt and his sleep shorts out of the way for better access. Yunho is already flushed so prettily in the cheeks all Hongjoong wants to do is _ ruin _him.

The soulmarks blacken Yunho’s skin from the top of his thighs up to his neck in curling, looping, slightly hazy lines of jungle vines and flowers Hongjoong can’t even begin to guess the names of. There’s another fern, like the one on Yunho’s hand, unfurling in the seam where thigh meets groin and Hongjoong has to put his teeth there—has to leave a mark that Yunho will feel later while he’s working—and worries the skin until Yunho tries to move away from the sting with a whine.

He’s done this so many times in so many different places with people he couldn't care less about, but holding the weight of Yunho’s cock in a loose fist feels different—_special_. His soulmate jerks when Hongjoong leans over to breathe hot breath over the tip of him, swears when he dips the tip of his tongue at the slit then backs away just to thumb up the criss cross of veins along Yunho’s shaft. He tastes like bitter skin, not unlike anyone else Hongjoong has ever had in his mouth. Hongjoong laves up the underside and secrets a wet pursed mouth kiss to the tip just so he can feel the soft heated skin against his lips. 

When Yunho groans a long and drawn out curse of his name, Hongjoong decides to take mercy on him, thumbs up Yunho’s length again until he can wrap his spit slick mouth around the head, dropping down nearly to the root in a swift motion he’d learned from Wooyoung years ago and put into practice too many times to count. Yunho makes punch drunk noises above him, reaches down to run his hands through Hongjoong’s hair, shy at first but more forceful the longer Hongjoong stays slowly, tortuously swallowing around him.

“Hongjoong, your _ mouth_, _ god_,” Yunho slurs, scraping his nails over Hongjoong’s scalp. “Jesus christ.”

Hongjoong hums agreement and tongues at the throb of Yunho’s cock in his mouth, bobbing down until it's touching the back of his throat. He does it again and again and again until Yunho is burbling expletives with his hips making guilty abortive thrusts against Hongjoong’s face. 

Hongjoong pops off, line of drool and precum falling from his bottom lip, keeps his hand roving up and down, and smiles up at Yunho knowing full well he is the dictionary definition of debauched right now. “You can fuck my face if you want,” he offers, “It’s okay.”

Yunho hisses between his teeth and clutches at the bedsheets tight enough Hongjoong imagines he can hear the individual fibers creaking under the strain. “You’re _ literally _ killing me.”

“Only a little bit,” Hongjoong coos. He unfolds Yunho’s free hand trying to shred the sheets and threads their fingers together sweetly before opening wide and letting Yunho fill his mouth again, the perfect weight on his tongue, against his throat, further down until he’s nearly gagging with it.

Yunho gives in and shoves his hips up, mean, until Hongjoong can do nothing but keep his aching jaw loose, keeps his lips pursed just so, takes his hand off Yunho’s shaft to gently roll the dark fuzz of his balls between his fingers. He can feel it when Yunho gets close: his hips stutter, his breathing goes erratic, the sweet crooning moans turn into staccato ‘ah ah ah’ sounds. 

Hongjoong sees Yunho sit up to watch him work through half-lidded, teary eyes and he catches Yunho’s release on his cheek, the side of his nose, and the seam of his mouth. 

“Oh,” Yunho blinks down at him as Hongjoong barely touches the tip of his tongue against the mess. “Fuck, talk about wet dream come true.”

Hongjoong rests his cheek—the clean one—against Yunho’s thigh right along a section of what appear to be flower buds and smiles even though his jaw fucking hurts. Yunho bites at his bottom lip to cover the ridiculous goofy grin making camp there, blindly reaching behind himself to reach a box of tissue by the bed. Possibly _ their _ bed now, assuming Hongjoong gets to actually stay.

“I love you,” he declares right as Yunho dabs at the cum sliding across his cheek down to his chin and laughs at how Yunho immediately freezes up—tissue still trembling on his skin. “Excuse me, sir, are you trying to glue kleenex to my face?”

“No.” Yunho, face still flushed a deep crimson, finally snaps out of it and finishes wiping the worst of the mess away. “I was just—I love you too.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Great.” Yunho pouts down at him. “You should get back up here and kiss me some more.”

"You sure about that?" Hongjoong smirks. “I do still have jizz on my mouth.”

Yunho eyes him consideringly. He glances between Hongjoong and the tissue box and sighs. “I was going to say I don’t care and do it anyway, but I think there are some things a man shouldn’t know about himself. Go wash your face and _ then _ come back and kiss me.”

Hongjoong leaves a slobbery kiss to Yunho’s thigh before he rolls away off the bed and waltzes into the bathroom in search of mouthwash. “Exactly how long do you want me to kiss you?”

“For forever!” Yunho calls back with a dramatic flop backwards. “And then I’m going to return the favor because I’m not an asshole. I just can’t feel any of my fingers and toes right now, oh my _ god_.”

Hongjoong nearly spews the tiny mouthful of Listerine at the bathroom mirror in his effort not to laugh.

_**\--------------** _

The next day, Hongjoong bundles himself up in another turtleneck to hide his marks and troops down to the nearest bus stop. Seungho wants to meet in one of the study rooms at the library after Hongjoong’s first few classes so they can have some semblance of privacy for whatever it is his ex-_ whatever _ wants to talk to him about. The rooms are used almost exclusively by couples and hookups alike making furtive attempts at groping each other under the formica table tops while pretending getting fingerbanged in the middle of the day is just normal University Student Behavior. 

Hongjoong is honestly nervous to be alone with him like this without knowing what it is Seungho wants to talk about because he knows, intimately, just how much stronger Seungho is in comparison. His biceps seem bigger than Hongjoong’s whole waist. Hongjoong isn’t necessarily afraid Seungho is going to try anything with him since he has always been a gentle giant...but the strangeness of the out of the blue request has his nerves on edge.

Seungho is flicking through a thick textbook when Hongjoong finds him.

“Hyung.” He offers with a thin lipped smile that’s more grimace than anything else when Hongjoong softly clicks the door closed behind him and drops his bag to the table.

“Seungho-yah,” Hongjoong greets. “What’s all this about? Why’d you need to see me in person like this?”

Seungho slouches backward in his chair, the textbook momentarily forgotten. “This is more of a courtesy call than anything else.”

Hongjoong blinks in confusion. “Courtesy call?”

He watches Seungho reach into his bag and produce a thick manila envelope with Hongjoong’s name scrawled over the front and the Park Misun Industries logo emblazoned across the bottom edge. His blood runs cold at the sight.

“What—”

“You know, you really hurt me when you broke up with me after I made so much time for you; after I drove you around and lost hours at work just to spend quality time together. Do you even know how hard I have to work to make rent?” Seungho tuts. “For someone that’s always said he didn’t believe in soulmates, you dropped me so quick once Yunho came into the picture.”

Hongjoong keeps his eyes locked on Seungho’s face so as not to give him the satisfaction of visibly panicking over whatever it is he’s playing at by waving his mother’s company logo around. He swallows back a hard lump in his throat, keeps his voice neutral when he asks, “How do you know his name?”

Seungho sighs, sliding the edge of the envelope along his ring finger. “After you broke up with me, I was concerned, you know? Because it was just so unlike you, so I turned to the only person who loves and cares for you like I do.”

Hongjoong grits his teeth.

“Seungho, tell me you didn’t—”

“Misun-ssi was understandably concerned that her son, who was contractually obligated to have no contact with his soulmate, was running away from his personal responsibilities to possibly run off with his soulmate.” Seungho gifts him with a doe-eyed look of faux-concern. “What mother wouldn’t immediately tell her son’s significant other everything she knew so they could find a way to _ help _ you?”

“Fucking christ,” Hongjoong hisses between the hard clench of his teeth. “I can’t believe you had the _ audacity—_”

“Of course,” Seungho talks over him, “It did take a bit of convincing of how close we were. Thankfully I still have the videos to prove the legitimacy of my claims.”

Mind blanking, Hongjoong gapes at the cruel smirk Seungho directs at him. And, damn him, Hongjoong stumbles over a quiet, “V-videos?”

“Videos.” Seungho agrees. “Minsi told you before, didn’t she? We have some of the same interests to keep things friendly between us.” He leans forward to whisper conspiratorially, “She likes to watch. And when she gets bored, she tracks down whoever else is on camera to ask them nicely to pay for the original files before she has to seek payment elsewhere. Like, maybe, the internet where anyone who’s anyone could look up a name and find out exactly what their boyfriend or their husband or their _celebrity son_ have been up to behind their backs.”

“No,” Hongjoong says, horrified.

“Yes. And Park Misun was all too happy to buy my silence under the condition she’d help you come to your senses and date me again.” Seungho’s brows draw together deeply in poor mockery of concern. “I’ve missed you, Hongjoong-ah. You shouldn’t have left me.”

Hongjoong remains mute. He can’t think, can barely breathe with the implication there is video proof of his stroke game hovering somewhere on a computer he has no access to and his mother had potentially seen. Fuck. 

_ Fuck_.

Hongjoong settles on a generic, “What exactly do you want from me?” because this is a game he’s already four steps behind in and he’s got no foothold on winning just yet.

Seungho eyes him for a moment before sliding the envelope across the table and taps the center of it with two fingers. “I want you to take this, read it, and send it back signed to Misun-ssi before the end of the week or I’ll start leaking stills of some of those videos.” Seungho pauses. “Or well, I guess more accurately Minsi will be the one sending them out.”

“I could tell someone you’re doing this,” Hongjoong threatens weakly. “I could go to the police or—”

“Who will assume it’s the work of a jealous soulmate and tell you tough shit because no one gives two fucks about some gay boy crying about his asshole being on the internet.” Seungho growls back and stands to loom at him from across the table. “Unless you want to be outed, I suggest you do as Misun asks. As _ I _ask.”

Seungho grabs his textbook and his bag. He stops to cup Hongjoong’s chin delicately, then rough when Hongjoong tries to jerk out of his hold, and lands a dry smack of his lips to Hongjoong’s cheek, pats it once and leaves.

His fingers are curled so tightly into fists he can feel blood squeezing beneath his nail beds. Hongjoong counts out the seconds until five minutes has passed, and Seungho is conceivably far away from this space, before he unclenches. His legs give out. Over the rush of blood in his ears and the harsh stinging throb in his knees from hitting the ground so hard, he can just make out the sound of someone's broken sobbing and shoves the sleeve of his hoodie into his mouth when he realizes, oh, it’s _him_.

_**\--------------** _

_ Wooyoung has created a new group. _

**MAYDAY**

**Mingi:** **  
** ???  
what’s this ?

**Seonghwa:** **  
**Is something wrong?

**Wooyoung:** **  
** Everything is wrong  
Please tell me everyone is online?  
This is like BAD bad.

**Yeosang:**  
must be if you’re using punctuation

**Seonghwa:** **  
**sang-ah maybe not the best time

**Yeosang:** **  
**sorry babe  
  
**** **Yunho:** **  
**i’m on brk for 10 mins

**San:** **  
**here

**Wooyoung:** **  
** Alright ok  
so  
FUCK  
can you guys mmake your way to my place like  
soon

**Mingi:** **  
** tell us what’s going on first????????  
I AM SO LOST WOO  
AND ALSO SPOOKED

**Wooyoung:** **  
**i finly got joong to calm down and sleep in my bed

**San:** **  
**um 

**Wooyoung:** **  
** not like that  
he called me in hysterics because he’s being blackmailed  
idk how to handle this please can spmeone come here and help

**Mingi** :  
Shit.

**San:** **  
**goddamn who would do that?

**Seonghwa:** **  
** I can guess **  
** grabbing my keys now  
Yeosang will be there sooner since he just ran out the door  
Are you okay woo?

**Wooyoung:** **  
**Joong was crying hyung

**Seonghwa: ** **  
** Right.  
We’ll be there soon

**Wooyoung:** **  
** Thanks  
He’ll appreciate it I’m sure

**Mingi:** **  
** Hyung can you pick me up on the way?  
I don’t have a car and my uber rating is like a 2 

**Seonghwa:** **  
** ofc  
text me your location

**Mingi:** **  
** ty  
where’d yunho go btw?

**Wooyoung:** **  
**on the phone with Joong  
he’s crying again ):

**San:** **  
** i’m getting jongho  
we’ll be there as fast as we can

**Wooyoung:  
**thank u ily

**San:  
**chin up love we'll come up with something to help  
  


Wooyoung glances through the doorway at Hongjoong curled into a fetal position on his bed staring blankly at his phone while tears slowly trickle from the corner of his eyes and hopes San is right. He's never seen Hongjoong this broken and empty, not even when they were forced apart by Park Misun having a raging conniption over her son touching another man's penis under _her_ roof.

God, he _really_ hopes San is right.


	4. ...and the world seems to Shine (does it does it doesn't it)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> triggery content warning: graphic description of a panic attack

_ Kim Beomseok, resident cardiologist, watches his son walk out of the chapel with his mouth set into a grim line. He takes the hospital’s elevator to the top floor, down the hallway of the office suite, and closes, locks, the door behind himself. The windows this high up don’t open, a downside to positioning himself in a room with floor to ceiling glass, but he lights up a fresh cigarette anyway. Smoke billows out and fogs the glass as he stands close to watch the specks of people milling about in the grounds below. _

_ They look a little like ants, like sickly dogs that need to be put down. _

_ In his desk drawer is a phone that stays charged in case of emergencies that he digs out after watching the insignificant idiots trooping themselves from the parking garage to the sprawling network of patient housing. _

_ Kim Beomseok takes another drag from his cigarette, blows the smoke from his nostrils, and makes two phone calls. The first goes straight to voicemail, which isn't unexpected considering their schedule. The second connects after only two rings. _

_ Without waiting for a response from the other end, Kim Beomseok says, “We have a problem.” _

**\--------------**

Hongjoong barely remembers the hazy steps that took him from being slumped against the study room table to the relative safety of Wooyoung’s car in the library parking lot, gently deposited into the passenger seat while Wooyoung frantically tries to get him to breathe through the hyperventilation. The envelope is crumpled in his fingers and Hongjoong tightens his grip on the edge when the dizzying nausea starts to build. They’re still somewhat in public. Anyone could walk by and see—  
  
Seungho could walk by and _ watch him—_

“Hongjoong, hyung, please,” Wooyoung begs, “Please just take a deep breath for me. Can you do that?”

Hongjoong shakes his head, sweat beading on his forehead and the edges of his vision going dark. “Can’t,” he rasps.

Wooyoung rolls his lips between his teeth before grabbing Hongjoong’s hand to rest it against his chest. “You _ can_. Here, try to match me.” Wooyoung breathes deep so Hongjoong can feel the rise of his lungs expanding and exhales after a soft count of one-two-three. Hongjoong wheezes between his teeth. Wooyoung rubs encouragingly along his arm. “That’s it. You’re doing so well, baby, you know that? One more deep breath and then we’ll go.”

Hongjoong clenches against the painful chattering of his teeth. “N-not your—” He sucks in one horrible lungful of air that _ hurts_. “Not—_baby—_”

“Says you,” Wooyoung snorts, trying for some semblance of normalcy and missing by a longshot by the way his face is going pale. “Move your arm for me so I can get your seatbelt on, alright? I’m going to take you home.”

"No!" Horror, sudden and all encompassing, has him shooting forward to grab Wooyoung's collar. "Not there! Anywhere but there, I refuse to go back—"  
  
"_My _home, hyung." Wooyoung gently extricates Hongjoong's fingers. "I wouldn't dream of taking you back to that witch's den, okay? _Never_."

Hongjoong sucks in another sharp breath, nods once, and jerkily gets himself into position so Wooyoung can get him strapped in. He has no idea if his marks are covered; no idea if one of the sneakier paps are hanging around and snapping pictures of his breakdown; no idea if Minsi is somewhere nearby laughing her ass off at her perfect performance of being his friend for the last year and half while their group studied together twice a week. Hongjoong wonders if Garam was in on it too. He wonders if _ anyone _ he’s ever been in contact with was actually who they said they were and were actually interested in being his friend. 

Hongjoong breathes harder when they finally turn out of the campus entrance and the paranoia reaches a fever pitch. It’s apparently loud enough, or desperate enough, that Wooyoung feels the need to reach over and thread their hands together in a vice grip. 

What if—what if Wooyoung or Seonghwa or...or—fuck, what if _ Yunho—_

“Five minutes,” Wooyoung reminds him softly. “Five minutes and we’ll be out of the car and I can put you to bed for a little while. We’ll work through this, hyung.”

Hongjoong cringes in on himself, wilting down until he can cry against Wooyoung’s hand and the dark smudge of his soulmark. “All I wanted to do was _ leave_.”

Wooyoung shifts his thumb back and forth in an attempt to be comforting. “I know.”

Hongjoong cries harder, deep heaving sobs worse than the ones he screamed into the void at the hospital for Jimin. For Jun. Now he’s curled into his seat like the pathetic piece of shit he is, trembling at the realization that this is going to be his life now: running from his past and his family and second guessing every interaction he’s ever had.

As if in a dream, Hongjoong allows himself to be led away from Wooyoung’s car, up the steps to his apartment building, and into Wooyoung’s bed. He lets his best friend remove his shoes and his bag without protest, but panics when Wooyoung tries to take the manila envelope from his death grip. “N-not—not yet,” Hongjoong begs, tongue thick and inarticulate in his mouth. “I can’t—”

“That’s okay.” Wooyoung holds his hands up. Hongjoong feels immediately guilty that he’s making Wooyoung act like he’s going to be accused of a crime at any second. “I’m not going to take anything you don’t want me to touch. Want to get out of your jacket?”

Hongjoong shakes his head. He needs—he feels like he needs everything on his body where it is or else the panic will get worse. Like Wooyoung taking his jacket to hang on the rack by the door or on the back of a chair is somehow going to end with him standing outside shivering in the cold with nothing to keep himself warm. Wooyoung only nods and drops the subject, picking Hongjoong’s feet up from the floor to shift them into the bed so he can lie back and relax, pulls the comforter up and over Hongjoong’s shoulders and tucks him in loosely with enough room to move around.

He watches the blurry image of Wooyoung gnaw at his bottom lip.

“Have you talked to Yunho yet?”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “He’s at—he’s at work. Don’t want him to worry.”

Wooyoung sits on the edge of the bed and begins to type something on his phone. Hongjoong lets himself rest for a moment, closes his eyes against the burn of shame and the dizzying way the room begins to tilt when he blinks. He’s had panic attacks before, inevitable from his mother’s control issues and the car crash, but this is ramping up to an intensity that Hongjoong isn’t sure he can take. His heart feels like it's about to come pounding right out of his chest.

Fuck, all he wanted to was to leave home. He wanted to live his life the way he’d always dreamed without his mother or his father breathing down the back of his neck and threatening to take away the only things he’s ever loved. His laptop, his music, and now Yunho—all of them feel like they're on the verge of being wrenched away just because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants. He should have never joined that study group or agreed to give Seungho his number or slept with him after only two weeks of hanging out...

_Idiot_. Hongjoong berates himself. _Moron. Coward. Should have just kept your head down instead of trying for more than you deserve._

Worse yet, now that their connection is finalized, Hongjoong is far enough away from Yunho that he can’t feel his soulmate half-way across town tending the register of the cafe. He can't feel the phantom warmth in his fingertips while Yunho makes ridiculously sugar sweet drinks. Hongjoong ends up tracing the marks along his hand by sense memory alone in a bid to find some kind of strength, some semblance of comfort from the knowledge he has someone he can lean on waiting for him out there in the world while Wooyoung continues to tap on his phone. The weirdly blurry vine around his fingers is first, then the collection of ferns curling over his knuckles and wrist, followed by the one bloom of a flower Hongjoong still hasn’t looked up the name of along his forearm. One-two-three, a deep breath and another gentle tracing of blackened skin. One-two-three, an exhale; again.

Wooyoung gets up with a quick kiss to his forehead. Hongjoong should probably thank him, but just as he’s getting the energy to make his vocal cords work, his phone rings.

Hongjoong curls into a tighter ball with his phone pressed to his ear and the thick envelope folded against his chest. “H-hey.”

“Jagiyah,” Yunho whispers at him over the receiver. Hongjoong shivers, bites his bottom lip to keep a pathetic needy whine in check because even this much interaction has his heart beating triple time with nerves. “Wooyoung said he had to come get you. What happened?”

Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut until they hurt from the pressure. “I don’t—everything is so fucked up, Yunho. It’s okay if you want to call it quits while we’re ahead—”

“Not going to happen,” Yunho interrupts firmly. 

Another scalding hot tear makes the trek from the corner of his eye down to Wooyoung’s fancy linen pillowcase. “Seungho videotaped us when we were..._you know_.” Yunho makes a sharp noise. Hongjoong continues, “And he took those videos to my mother.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong tries to laugh but ends up choking back another hiccuping cry. “Said he was going to start releasing them on the internet if I didn’t sign another one of mom’s insane contracts by Friday. Yunho—Yunho, I can’t—I don’t want you caught up in all of this. I—” Panic seizes his chest again and Hongjoong stutters through his teeth beginning to chatter.

Yunho remains quiet for a beat before he growls, “I’ll kill him. I swear I will, Hongjoong.”

“Yunho—”

His soulmate quiets him with a small hush. “You’re at Wooyoung’s place, right? I’m going to tell my manager there’s been an emergency and get someone to cover my shift, which might take about thirty minutes before I can get there. Are you going to be okay?”

“No,” Hongjoong admits, crying harder now, “I love you. I'm sorry.”

“You should never be sorry, not for this, and you _know_ I love you too,” Yunho stresses. “Wait for me.”

At some point Hongjoong must have fallen into dreamless sleep because, when he finally blinks awake, he finds himself pulled in close to someone’s chest with their hands roving in gentle circles along his back. He can almost taste the warm spice of a familiar cologne and sighs, snuggling deeper into their embrace. Yeosang.

“Where’s hyung?”

Yeosang pauses the motion of his arm but leaves his hand pressed against Hongjoong’s back, a warm steady weight. “He’s on the way. Mingi needed a ride so Seonghwa is making a pit stop to grab him. I, ah, ran off before I got the full itinerary from him, sorry.” 

Hongjoong threads nerveless fingers into Yeosang’s shirt with a hum. He can just barely make out the fine tremors that have Yeosang's chest and his hands quaking where they're pressed together.

“Scared you?”

Yeosang digs his chin into Hongjoong’s head when he nods and rubs his thumb along the base of his spine. “And worried,” his friend finally admits. “Seonghwa and I have both admitted we’re scared you’re going to get so fed up with whatever it is your parents decide to put you through next and you'll just up and leave to a place we can’t follow.”

Hongjoong freezes. “Like...New York or something?”

“No,” Yeosang quietly murmurs. “Not like New York or something.”

Guilt and shame and embarrassment all swirl together in his gut and Hongjoong buries his face harder into Yeosang’s chest. He can’t say unequivocally that he’s never considered—but that had only been in the aftermath of furtive hookups in seedy hotels or the men’s bathroom of hole in the wall clubs Hongjoong stumbled into when he was finally free of his mother’s latest campaign. It was only ever vague wishful thinking back then, but he thought he’d kept that little piece of himself secret to protect his friends, his _ real _ friends that have stood beside him through the bad and the worse.

“‘m sorry,” Hongjoong says, muffled by cotton. He can hear Wooyoung's voice float in from somewhere deeper in the apartment, probably on the phone with San or Mingi asking for advice. "I never meant for you to worry about that."

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, hyung. You’re always trying to carry burdens by yourself, so when Wooyoung told us you were in a bad way, then...well.” Yeosang adjusts the comforter up and over Hongjoong’s shoulder where it had fallen off and taps the folder held between them. “Do you feel like talking about this yet?” 

Hongjoong shakes his head. “Not yet. Yunho is coming, I don’t want,” his breath hitches on an errant hiccup of emotional devastation, “I just want him to be _here_.”

“That’s fair.” Yeosang hooks a foot around his ankle to tangle their legs together. “I’ve only met him once but he seems like a cool dude.”

He is and Hongjoong lets his mind wander to that morning when Yunho pressed him up against the wall in the bedroom to kiss him senseless before gifting him with an extra key to the apartment. Thinking about Yunho is safe. Hongjoong can escape the crushing weight of his panic if he can just focus on Yunho, on his _ soulmate_. Maybe if he concentrates hard enough he can pretend this is all just one long fever dream and he never actually woke up from his snoozefest in the library yesterday.

Yeosang lightly hums the beat to an old trot song. It makes the thick band around his neck distort when he switches notes.

Hazily, Hongjoong touches the very bottom edge of the topmost ring. “Do you and Seonghwa ever appear in each other's dreams?”

“Something tells me you’re not talking metaphorical dreams of the future.”

Hongjoong shakes his head in the negative.

“Thought so.” Yeosang’s fingers dig hard against the small of his back as his friend tenses. The room goes eerily, deathly quiet to the point Wooyoung murmuring on the phone in the other room is loud, like he’s speaking into a megaphone with how clear Hongjoong can hear him still speaking to San or maybe Jongho at this point. “You weren’t around then, but when Seonghwa and I first met I was attempting to break into the competitive skateboarding scene pretty hard. He drove me to comps, watched me skin my knees bloody every other day practicing…Point is, I was _good_. Better than I am now.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“Someone didn’t like it,” Yeosang says over him, “And the night before I was supposed to take the stage at Ttukseom he decided to club me in the fucking knee right in front of hyung while we were waiting in line at one of the clubs. Broke my leg and dislocated my kneecap.”

Hongjoong winces. “Shit, dude.”

Yeosang shrugs. “It is what it is. Anyway, apparently the trauma of watching me scream on the sidewalk forced our soul connection to go haywire and we shared dreams for a solid year until I was finally cleared from physical therapy.”

Hongjoong apologizes, which Yeosang shakes off by telling Hongjoong _ he _ wasn’t the one carrying the goddamn mallet down the main drag of a street to go take someone down like they’re the punk equivalent of Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan. Though it does make sense that traumatic events trigger the soul connection to flare up intensely enough that soulmates can share dreams considering Hongjoong first met Yunho at the scene of the crash, the dreamscape and real life even though he wasn’t aware of it at the time. Maybe that’s the reason their original pull was so strong, he and Yunho had been in close proximity _ and _suffered through a car crash that claimed lives.

The image of those bloodstained bodies littered with glass flashes across his vision and Hongjoong shivers.

Yeosang continues to rub soothing circles into his back.

“Seonghwa is probably going to be here soon, do you want to sit up before he comes charging in here like—”

He’s interrupted by Wooyoung’s buzzer and the sound of a door slamming, followed by someone saying loudly, “Where is my _ boy_?”

“Nevermind,” Yeosang sighs while Hongjoong starts laughing. He calls out, “We’re back here!”

Seonghwa full on sprints down Wooyoung’s hallway, and Hongjoong spares a brief wincing thought to any neighbors that might be home to hear the stampede of feet above them, before he’s clutching at the doorway, wild-eyed and panting. “Hongjoong-ah!”

Hongjoong somehow finds the strength to offer up a one armed wave. “Hey.”

Seonghwa, who is grey-faced and mildly sweaty, rolls his lips between his teeth before he’s pissily shoving Yeosang out of the way so he has enough room to pull Hongjoong into a fierce hug that Hongjoong accepts with only a small amount of sniffling.

“Wooyoung said you cried,” Seonghwa nearly wails into Hongjoong’s ear sprawled half-way across the bed. “You never, ever cry!”

Hongjoong buries his face against his friend’s chest and exhales the shakiest breath he’s taken since Wooyoung tried to do breathing exercises with him in the car. “Not everyday I’m getting b-blackmailed.”

Seonghwa pulls him in tighter. “I brought Mingi with me for moral support and I think San and their new boytoy are on the way too. Are you comfortable being around them right now? I can tell Wooyoung to keep them occupied.”

His hyung smells like fruit body wash beneath the knitted layers of his bulky sweater and the acrid sharp tang of perspiration soaking into the high dollar cotton. Hongjoong keeps his face nestled over Seonghwa’s heart so the rhythmic thud-thud of his heartbeat lulls him back toward something like calm. He can hear Mingi and Wooyoung speaking in low tones outside the door, Yeosang perched on the edge of the bed staying stone silent with a hand cupped over the jut of Hongjoong’s ankle.

“It’s okay,” he finally says. “I’m—I can’t hide in here forever.”

“You don’t have to hide anywhere, but you’re still allowed to be comfortable.” Seonghwa cuffs the back of his head gently. “If you want us all to go away all you have to do is give the word, I’ll drive everyone home.”

Tempting. Hongjoong pulls away from Seonghwa’s embrace with the envelope of documents still held against his chest. “Yunho is going to be here soon. I want t-to be mostly normal by then.” 

He internally pats himself on the back that his voice stays relatively steady unlike the tremors still making his limbs jitter. It’s a much better improvement to the all encompassing numbing pain that made his chest and his head feel like they were exploding fiery microbursts with every pump of his blood through his veins. Breathing is getting easier by the second anyway.

“Hyung!” Mingi bleats in high pitched concern when the three of them make their way down the hallway, Yeosang keeping a firm hand on Hongjoong’s elbow to hold him steady with how badly Hongjoong’s knees quake on every third step. “Are you—can I hug you?”

Skin prickling, Hongjoong jerks his head in sharp sideways refusal. “Sorry, Mingi-yah. ‘S too much right now.”

Any other day, any other time when Hongjoong wasn’t carrying a thousand ton weight in his arms, he’d have happily accepted Mingi’s enthusiastic physical affection with a grin and wide open arms. As it is, Hongjoong wants anyone touching him that he’s known for less than six months about as badly as he wants another paralyzing panic attack. He knows Mingi, has hung around him enough times to know he’s an okay dude, but there’s a niggling little voice in the back of his head telling him not to trust Song Mingi, who has no living soulmate and could possibly be another one of Park Misun’s plants sent to collect information that could be used later to fling back into Hongjoong’s face.

Mingi backs down with a wilted slant to his shoulders.

“We understand, hyung,” Wooyoung offers with a nudge of his elbow into Mingi’s side. “You’ve had a really, really shitty morning.”

“Understatement of the year, Woo.” Hongjoong wearily rests on the dark velvet sofa set up next to an industrialist’s take on a floor lamp, which mostly looks like a metal clothing hanger someone, who’d never seen a lamp _ in their life, _ mangled into shape in a pitch dark room thirty seconds after _ another _ someone had shoved them in with a threat of violence and a demand for a masterpiece. It’s hideous. For some reason Wooyoung absolutely adored the thing. Hongjoong thinks about knocking it over ‘on accident’ every time he makes a visit.

It occurs to him then that maybe he’d focused too much on the lamp when he tunes back into the real world just in time to hear Seonghwa mid-lecture on cookie recipes while Mingi clutches a packet of oreos to his chest. 

“I just wanted a snack,” Mingi says faintly. Seonghwa continues to nag him about buttercream and hadn’t Mingi ever tasted a decent sugar cookie? 

Hongjoong throws one of his balled up socks at Seonghwa’s head as a distraction. “Alright, mom, leave the poor kid alone to make his own cookie choices.” 

Seonghwa hisses something venomous about oreos not being _ real _cookies anyway that everyone, especially Yeosang, chooses to ignore. Mingi sends him a look so stupidly grateful Hongjoong feels instantly guilty he’d ever suspected Mingi was a plant. No one that adorably baffled by Seonghwa’s brand of frothing at the mouth over baked goods could be associated with Park Misun or that shitheel Seungho and his psychopath soulmate. 

Wooyoung drops next to him on the couch and leans most of his weight against Hongjoong’s shoulder. “You know, Yeosang didn’t even say anything to me when he got here, just stomped his way into _ my _ apartment and beelined to _ my _ bed.” Yeosang reaches around Hongjoong’s shoulders to pinch Wooyoung on the back of the neck. 

“Ow! Yeosang-ie, what the hell?”

“Don’t go revealing secrets no one asked you about,” Yeosang says tartly. 

They watch Mingi and Seonghwa disappear into the kitchen, presumably for Seonghwa to bully the latest addition to this ragtag group of friends into baking. It was a nervous habit Seonghwa developed way before Hongjoong had ever met him and he wonders if it started about the same time as Yeosang’s attack. 

“Whatever, jackass,” Wooyoung says. “Hyung, how are you feeling?”

Hongjoong picks at the topmost edge of the envelope. He still can’t feel Yunho, which he hopes doesn’t mean his soulmate’s job refused to give him a leave of absence. “Not the best.”

“But you can breathe okay now, right?” Wooyoung softly places a hand along Hongjoong’s sternum as if he’s checking for any erratic heaving breaths. “You scared the absolute piss out of me earlier.”

Hongjoong flinches. He can feel Yeosang begin to tense where he’s pulled in tight to Hongjoong’s side. “I’m sorry, Woo. I didn’t mean to—”

“Shut up,” Wooyoung tells him fiercely. “That is not at all what I meant and you have nothing to be sorry for. I just—you mean a lot to me, to _ us_, and it was scary seeing you so upset when you’re usually so put together. I’m just glad I wasn’t in the studio or else I wouldn’t have heard you calling.”

Hongjoong swipes at his eyes to cover the hot trail of tears beading up along his lashline. “Thanks. Thank you for being here for me.”

Wooyoung kisses him on the cheek. “Always.”

The envelope continues to be a thousand ton weight on his lap. If the deadline is really Friday, that means he’s got all of three days to figure out what to do about this insane situation and give his mother an answer. Seungho seems to be under the impression Hongjoong is going to go running back into his arms after getting the green light from his mother, but surely Misun had told him she refuses to let her son _ look _ at another man much less date one? Unless she’d had an immense change of heart, going back to buddyfucking Seungho couldn’t possibly be in the contract. Not that he would, anyway. 

Not with Yunho in the picture.

Not with his feelings, their shared marks, and the gleaming future blooming before them now that he and Yunho are finally together assuming they can get over this bump in the road.

He taps Wooyoung’s thigh. “Hey, you mind if I go back to your room to read this over?”

“Sure, that’s fine.” Wooyoung nervously wrings his hands together. “You want company?”

Yeosang leans a little heavier against his side in solidarity. “Thought you wanted to wait for your boy?”

“I can handle it myself. And I _ do _ want to wait for Yunho but…” Hongjoong swallows. “I think it would be better for my peace of mind to at least get the rundown before he gets here. I don't want him to see me have another episode just yet.”

Yeosang frowns like he wants to say more, but Wooyoung is already patting at Hongjoong’s thighs encouragingly. “Take as much time as you need. San and Jongho are going to be here soon anyway and I know you probably don’t want to break down in front of them.”

“Thanks,” Hongjoong sighs. His knees still wobble when he goes to stand. The bedroom isn’t that far away, so he manages to get himself back to the comfort of Wooyoung’s bed with relative ease except for an instant where he had to hold himself up against the wall when his stomach lurched at the thought of actually reading what was in his hands.

Hongjoong flops bonelessly down to the mattress and finally allows himself to open the unassuming manila envelope for the first time. 

The sheaf of papers stink like his mother’s perfume. Hongjoong isn’t sure if it’s a power play reminding him of who is pulling the strings or if it’s just a psychosomatic thing his brain is feeding him just because he’s holding a familiar contract meant to make him suffer in some way. He grits his teeth and flicks passed the usual legal mumbo-jumbo she starts with because it’s always the same. Park Misun is a blameless entity, her business dealings are strictly legal, and Hongjoong is a worthless employee that refuses to do his job. The real meat of what she’s trying to pull are laid out in black and white twelve pages later in five equally horrible bullet points:

  1. Kim Hongjoong will cut all contact with Jeong Yunho, his soulmate, effective immediately.
  2. Kim Hongjoong will provide Misun Industries with extremely detailed descriptions and pictures of any and all soulmarks for review.
  3. Kim Hongjoong will cease any and all school activities while under voluntary house arrest until such a time as Park Misun deems him fit to return to society.
  4. Kim Hongjoong will hand over all electronics to Park Misun including, but not limited to, his laptop, his phone, and any tablets capable of connecting to wi-fi.
  5. Choi Seungho and Kim Minsi will be paid off with the proceeds from selling Kim Hongjoong’s belongings that have been generously gifted to him thanks to Park Misun’s bank accounts. 

He scowls. So she wants him isolated and unable to contact the outside world, lovely.

The laptop and phone he can work around. He could just as easily leave them with Yunho or hide them in secret in the event he actually gives in and goes back. He’s not planning on it, but if needs must…

Hongjoong flicks to the list of consequences at the very back of the packet and goes cold. Those pages he carefully removes, folds into a tidy stack to bury in his coat pocket, and stares at the opposite wall while his mind races with every god awful possibility his imagination can conjure. Outside Wooyoung’s bedroom, he can just make out the sound of the door chime ringing and Wooyoung’s eager exclamations no doubt announcing San and Jongho have made their appearance. 

San is loud. Mingi is somehow louder. There’s another voice a little deeper than Yeosang’s that must be Jongho, the mysterious ‘third’ San had hurriedly told him about over the phone. Seonghwa is probably having a field day with him. 

After five minutes listening to his friends excitedly yell at each other wherein Hongjoong clawed open the skin between his fingers trying to pinch the bad thoughts away, he curls up into a ball on Wooyoung’s bed and, very quietly, breaks down for a second time.

**\--------------**

_ In the background of a tiktok video featuring a young woman clad in a faded university hoodie dancing to Renegade, someone recognizes the stumbling silhouette of a familiar local celebrity. Intermixed with comments about her dancing skillset, about how tired she looks standing in front of a library table stacked high with textbooks and highlighted notes, other observations start pouring in: _

_ ‘is that kim hongjoong??? omg he has so many marks!’ _

_ ‘I thought his soulmate still hadn’t met him yet! His mom was just on the radio saying they were going to touch in public! wtf???? :/’ _

_ ‘damn dude is covered in marks luckyyyy’ _

_ ‘Anyone else think he looks a little...off? hope everything is okay...’  
_

**\--------------**

Hongjoong feels Yunho first. Their connection burns at the temperature of a dying ember centered in his chest, then like the slowly building inferno of a bonfire when Yunho is waiting at the entrance to Wooyoung’s building. Hongjoong tries to move, tries to get his body to uncurl from his desperately pathetic position in the middle of Wooyoung’s bed, but every cell in his body is aching with nerves that have been scraped raw from panic and despair and it’s difficult to do more than prop himself up on his elbows when Yunho finally opens the door to the bedroom.

“Yun—”

Yunho crosses the room lightning quick and silences him with a fierce kiss to his mouth. Hongjoong whimpers into it, scrabbling at Yunho’s collar to pull him somehow closer until Yunho topples over and presses him down to the soft linen.

His soulmate backs away to gently nudge their foreheads together. “Say the word and I’ll take everything to the police right now. This shit Seungho is trying to pull, the fucking contracts your mom has you signing for no goddamn reason, _ all of it_, Joong-ah.”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “Not yet.”

He can feel the scrunch of skin as Yunho furrows his brows. “But why? Why play into her hands when you could just as easily show the whole world the shit she’s trying to do to you?”

“Because if I do it now she and Seungho are probably going to out me to the press, Yunho.” Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m not ready.”

Yunho is silent, but his hands are warm where they brush away tears Hongjoong hadn’t realized were trickling down his face. “So we say the videos are a fabrication to blackmail you for money.”

“What money?” Hongjoong laughs bitterly. “Someone will leak my bank statements and realize I don’t actually have anything of my own and figure it out in a heartbeat. No,” he sighs, “That won’t work either. Anyway, I think Park Misun has half the police force and some of the high traffic paparazzi firms on payroll.”

Yunho curses, rolling off to the side an arm’s length away. Hongjoong does his best not to feel immediately bereft and tetherless from the disconnect.

“So what’s the plan? Give in?”

“For now. I’m—I’m going to let Yeosang read it over and see if he can find any loopholes.” Hongjoong swallows, reaching for Yunho’s shirt so he can have some kind of physical connection again. “He’s good at that after signing a bunch of waivers and shit for his skateboarding competitions.”

“That’s fair,” Yunho agrees. He reaches out to pull Hongjoong into his chest. “You had me worried, hyung. Remember the dreams with the crash and your childhood?”

Hongjoong hums agreement, burying his face into Yunho’s shirt right over his heart so he can listen to the comforting thump-thump of his heart that’s so different from Seonghwa’s heartbeat earlier. It’s more calming, settles his nerves with the first muffled beats. Maybe it’s the soul connection at work. Maybe it’s just Yunho’s presence acting as a placebo to his frayed nerves.

“Even when you were presented with dead bodies and your mom shoving pills down your throat, you were calm. You were always _so calm_, hyung.” Yunho shivers. “When you answered the phone, it didn’t even sound like you. I thought I was speaking to a ghost.”

Hongjoong clenches his fingers into Yunho’s work uniform shirt until the buttons creak from the strain. Yunho squeezes him tighter. “All I wanted was to finally get out of that house and be with you for real. That’s it. If I hadn’t slept with that asshole we wouldn’t even be having this conversation—”

“What’s done is done,” Yunho interrupts. “All we can do is go from here, yeah? Don’t blame yourself when the people trying to blackmail you are the ones holding things over your head.”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong sighs. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Ready to go back to everyone in the living room? I didn’t have time to meet him, but I think Jongho is here.”

Hongjoong bites the inside of his cheek. He wants Jongho and Mingi and San to witness his breakdown as much as he wants to shave his head bald or run willingly back into Seungho’s arms. This is Wooyoung’s home, though, and if he needs the emotional support of his soulmates while taking care of Hongjoong’s panic attack then Hongjoong has nothing to gripe about.

“Give me five minutes?” Hongjoong moves until he can get his mouth against the skin of Yunho’s throat at the center of the chrysanthemum. “I need you.”

Yunho places a warm kiss to his head. “We’ve got all the time in the world. At least until Wooyoung kicks us out.”

It takes fifteen minutes for Hongjoong to finally find the nerve to face the rest of the group again. Wooyoung pokes his head in at minute twelve to check on them and Yunho has to assure him they’re fine when Hongjoong opens his mouth and a sad noise of defeat comes out almost of its own volition.

Wooyoung owns four pieces of plush living room furniture: a loveseat, an oversized chair, a chaise, and the velvet couch. Wooyoung has decided to commandeer the loveseat so he can squeeze himself, San, and a new gentle face that can only be Jongho. Hongjoong waves at everyone with a tiny, “Hey.”

“Man, you look like shit,” San offers up, followed by a whining , “Ow, fuck!” When Wooyoung reaches over to smack his thigh with a resounding ‘fwap’ of skin against denim. 

“You can’t just say that, San,” Wooyoung hisses, “Have some tact.”

Hongjoong decides to save him when San directs watery puppy eyes in his direction. “It’s fine, San’s right anyway. I also _ feel _ like shit, so.”

Jongho’s eyes flick between the three of him, obviously shy. 

“You must be Jongho.” Hongjoong grins wan. “Kim Hongjoong. You’re meeting me at a really weird time in my life, sorry in advance.”

Jongho shakes his head holding his hands up and outward to wave off the apology. Hongjoong notes he’s got near identical marks on each palm that can only be the shared marks between himself and Wooyoung and San. “Choi Jongho. You don’t have to apologize. I’m, ah—” Jongho scratches his nose bashfully. “Um, actually in the interest of full disclosure, my dad works for your mom’s company.”

Hongjoong freezes. _ A plant_, the paranoid part of his brain screams, _ this is what a spy looks like, abort mission, run away. _

“Is that...right…”

San makes a curious sound in the back of his throat. “Really?”

“Where does he work?” Yeosang asks. 

Jongho fiddles with his thumbs. It’s either a nervous tic or clever motion to make Hongjoong drop his guard. He squeezes Yunho’s hand tight like a vice to keep from blurting out the suspicion like an asshole.

“Um, he works as a glorified security guard at a building downtown. He says it’s supposed to be some kind of office building, but no one ever goes in except for you and your friends.”

Wooyoung gasps dramatically. “Mr. C?”

“Oh my god,” San says faintly. 

“He always gave me the heebie jeebies!” Wooyoung bounces his knees in poorly contained enthusiasm. “Hongjoong, I told you before, right?”

Jongho’s face screws up into a playful grimace. “That’s my _ dad_, jackass.”

Wooyoung wilts, sufficiently embarrassed, “Sorry just—”

“Wooyoung told me multiple times talking to your dad made him want to break out his safe word,” Hongjoong adds blandly as Yunho leads them to the overstuffed chair to pull him down into Yunho’s lap. “Every time he had to get clearance, in fact.”

Jongho turns to Wooyoung with a curious slant to his mouth. “What’s your safeword?”

San leans against Jongho’s shoulder. “It’s butternut,” he says in a stage whisper.

“Have you ever had to use it?” Jongho asks.

“New subject!” Wooyoung yells and it’s comical enough that San and Jongho have to lean against one another to laugh. 

It’s a little like watching a live take of a Three Stooges routine, Hongjoong notes, taking in the way Wooyoung’s mouth slowly upturns as he gazes at his soulmates laughing. He’s immeasurably happy that Wooyoung is finally going to be surrounded by the love and appreciation his best friend deserves. Something must have happened with San too since he’s giving both Wooyoung and Jongho heart eyes that could be seen from outer space. Hongjoong makes a mental note to pull the story out of Wooyoung later.

Seonghwa and Mingi finally emerge from the kitchen with a tray of fresh baked sugar cookies and chocolate thumbprints. While they’re busy doling out sweets, Hongjoong sends a hopefully discreet text to Wooyoung begging him to get rid of the three newest additions just long enough for Yeosang to go over the packet.

As subtle as a car crash, Wooyoung makes a show of rubbing his stomach. “Is anyone else hungry? I’m _ starving_.”

“I could eat,” Yeosang plays along. “I vote chicken.”

“You’re going to turn into a chicken one of these days,” Seonghwa grouches. “But something other than cookies does sound pretty good...I’m assuming we’re going to be here for a while anyway.”

Wooyoung nudges San. “Why don’t you take Jongho and Mingi to go get food for everyone? You can take my car.”

Mingi, who is smart enough to catch on to what Wooyoung is trying to do, begs for the most out of the way fried chicken place he can come up with because they have a certain sauce he just _ has _ to have. Hongjoong will have to send him a grateful text about it later.

Once the trio bundle themselves out of the apartment with Wooyoung’s keys, his credit card, and a ridiculously huge order that will take at least thirty minutes to make, Seonghwa holds out his hand. 

“Alright, Joong-ah, time to face the music. Mind showing us what you’re dealing with?”

Hongjoong hands over the envelope. He has to grab onto Yunho’s hands cinched around his waist to keep himself from trying to snatch the sheaf of paper back. Yunho rubs his thumb in soothing motions along his wrist.

“Don’t be nervous. We’re going to figure this out together, hyung,” Yunho whispers softly against his ear so it doesn’t carry any farther than the space between them. “Relax, jagiyah.”

“Easier said than done,” Hongjoong whispers back. Yunho only hums, soothing his fingers over the slowly scabbing skin between Hongjoong’s knuckles. 

Yeosang and Seonghwa both pour over the thick stack, Wooyoung nervously biting his nails on the opposite loveseat until Yeosang waves him over so he can see, too.

Hongjoong’s guts curdle the longer they read and flip page after page. He’s never allowed anyone to see what he puts up with from his mother. Wooyoung knows the most, but he’s never actually _seen_ the contracts Park Misun pulls directly from her ass.

Yunho continues the slow and steady pressure along his knuckles.

Yeosang makes an unhappy sound with his eyebrows furrowed. “Has anyone seen your marks?”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “No one except for Yunho. I’ve been careful not to let anyone see them just yet. They’re too special.” 

His soulmate gifts him with a smiling kiss against his cheek. Wooyoung makes gagging motions until Seonghwa smacks at his arm in reprimand.

“Regardless of how you feel about them,” Yeosang continues, “There are some clauses in here that stipulate you can’t show them off to the public without Misun’s explicit permission, so I guess you’re in the clear there.” Yeosang flicks another page with an increasingly angry scowl. “There are some..._ questionable _ requests here. She wants detailed pictures of _ everything_. If there’s a mark, then she wants full access to it.”

“Gross,” Wooyoung says. “What if you have a mark on your dick? Does your fucking _ mom _ want to see that too?”

“Thankfully there isn't,” Yunho pipes up and then slaps his hands over his mouth, wide eyed.

Seonghwa bursts out laughing. “Boy, you work _ quick_. Get it, Hongjoong!”

“Please, please, shut up.” Hongjoong hides his face beneath the collar of his shirt while the rest of the room minus Yunho snickers at him. “Leave me alone.”

“Sorry, hyung,” Yunho mumbles behind him.

“It’s fine.” Hongjoong gives up trying to keep his face covered to lean back so he can kiss the corner of Yunho’s mouth. “The majority of the people in this room have seen my dick by now. It doesn’t bother me _ that _ much.”

Yunho grins at him sweetly and squishes their cheeks together. “Okay.”

Yeosang coughs. “Y’all done yet? There’s still almost all of this packet left to read through.”

“Sorry, Sang-ah,” Hongjoong says.

Yeosang waves him off. “You know she’s trying to use your sexuality as a weapon right? Like there's a piece about publicly outing you if you don't sign and date this by Friday.”

“I know.” Hongjoong bites his nails. “I really don’t think she’ll actually go through with that part of the deal though. She’s got an image to uphold and having a gay son doesn’t fit into it. I was going to come out when I turned sixty and no one gave a shit about me anymore anyway.”

“What about Seungho?” Wooyoung asks. “Would he do it anyway? I’m still trying to figure out how he fits into her master plan.”

Hongjoong fails to mention the carefully folded away bunch of paper in his coat pocket. “He’s probably just trying to pull money out of her. We can’t be sure the videos he claims to have of me are more than just a bluff.”

Yunho arms tighten around his middle. Seonghwa and Wooyoung both offer up pale faced stares.

“He took videos?” Wooyoung hoarsely asks.

“I’ll break his fucking legs,” Yeosang mutters darkly under his breath. 

Seonghwa shakes his head, touching the tips of his fingers to Yeosang’s kneecap. “Sang-ah…”

“Right. Sorry.” Yeosang gives a thin lipped smile. “No rehashing old trauma.”

Hongjoong deflates. “Keep reading. She’s trying to yank my degree out from under me too.”

“And she wants you to return home under voluntary house arrest.” Yeosang grits his teeth hard enough Hongjoong imagines he can hear the enamel crying out in pain. “You will be required to move back home and sit pretty until she's ready for you to appear in public at her discretion. She might be threatening your degree, but your tuition has already been paid, right? There's nothing she can really do on that front. Cheap scare tactics.”

Hongjoong considers the ceiling. “If I have to buckle down and finish up all of my projects at once to see if I can graduate early, I'll do that. No way is she going to take my education from me.”

“By Friday?” Wooyoung asks skeptically. 

“By whatever date I have to,” Hongjoong tells him. “If that means Friday, then so be it.”

Seonghwa reaches out to poke at a certain section. “Hey, what’s this clause about preparing retraction statements about anything illegal that may or may not crop up about your mom’s company?”

Hongjoong blows out a breath. “Misun has a casket full of skeletons in her closet. She’s clearly not above blackmail and I’m almost ninety percent sure she’s got a whole network of people working on illegal background checks so she can dig up dirt on her rivals and anyone she thinks is going to threaten her ‘empire’. Somehow she's got a steady supply of prescription sleeping pills, so there’s obviously a dirty doctor under her umbrella too.” He rolls his lips between his teeth before admitting, “Plus, she paid off a bunch of law enforcement to keep Yunho’s parents deaths hush hush so that’s a thing. Take your pick, any one of these things gets out and Park Misun is ruined. I’m her innocent baby scapegoat she can lean on when things go south.”

Yunho finally threads their fingers together, squeezing tight, and Hongjoong squeezes back in a show of support. 

“Oh,” Wooyoung gasps, “Oh fuck, is that—was he involved in that crash?”

Hongjoong nods. He's only ever told Wooyoung the story so the twin looks of confusion on Seonghwa and Yeosang’s faces isn't too unexpected. 

“What happened?”

Hongjoong tells the story from his perspective. Riding in the back of a limousine on the way to some fancy event hosted by his mother when either they or the other car went off course and the resounding crunch that followed and the extreme pain of broken ribs. He leaves out the gory details of bodies flung across the hood of Yunho’s family car, but he does mention his mother shoving money into the hands of a police officer. 

“I didn’t see much myself,” Yunho adds in once Hongjoong finishes speaking. “They carted me to the back of an ambulance for a few minutes to stitch up my face and then put me in the back of cruiser headed to the orphanage.”

Seonghwa looks even more confused than before. “What about your extended family? Surely someone would have come to get you.”

Yunho shrugs. “I can only assume, based on what we know now, is that any family I _ do _ have were never informed I was even alive. Pretty sure whatever happened to my parents was bundled up as some kind of freak accident that left no survivors and I was sent to the orphanage instead. A living person in that kind of situation would have been _ messy_.” 

Yunho trembles all over and Hongjoong feels guilty they’re even having to discuss this.

“I tried to look into it once I was old enough, but either the police report was out of date and removed or they never filed one to begin with, and without a date to go off of…”

The trio sent off in search of food finally return home to break the heavy atmosphere with arms laden with at least four different types of fried and sauced chicken. The rest of the evening is spent getting acquainted with Jongho, who Hongjoong still doesn’t trust, and pouring over the contract with a fine-toothed comb in search of loopholes. Yeosang finds relatively few and the consequences of breaking the contract are all monetary punishments, which Hongjoong doesn't have, or threatening to out him, which Hongjoong doesn't _ want_. Not yet at least. Maybe not ever, but he'd still like to have the option to decide for himself. 

There’s a clause he skipped over earlier about agreeing to a publicity stunt involving himself and a certain celebrity newly signed to the PMI label that leaves a bad taste in his mouth. They have a little under a week to come up with a plan of attack, but for now...Hongjoong is going to enjoy the time he has surrounded by the people he loves and he's going to put the rest out of his mind for one night.

He can afford that much.

The folded papers weigh heavily in the back of his mind, even when Yunho finally loses that last little bit of tension in his shoulders and laughs at the horrible aegyo Mingi tries in a bid to weasel a drumstick out of Yeosang’s claws.

**\--------------**

The paparazzi camped outside Yunho’s apartment building has scampered off for the evening, no doubt in search of bigger fish, which is good considering Yunho has made no move to cover any of his marks and Hongjoong is too wrung out to bother trying to conceal the prominent carnations wrapped around his throat. 

“How do you feel about a hot shower?” Yunho carefully pulls the coat from Hongjoong’s arms and hangs it on the back of his front door. 

“Sounds like heaven.”

They undress quietly, each preoccupied with their own thoughts. Hongjoong has no idea what Yunho is thinking about, but he’s still stuck on the consequences lined out in perfect black lines he’d hidden away from the group. At some point he’ll have to face the music...probably soon. Sooner than Hongjoong would like.

Yunho, naked and flushed pink already from the heat leaking from behind the shower curtain, tugs him into the stall so he can run cold fingertips over Hongjoong’s scalp. “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with all this, hyung.”

Hongjoong shakes his head. He doesn’t want to talk about that _ now _, not with Yunho gloriously nude and covered with the shape of Hongjoong’s soul from neck to thigh. Apparently his soul is the shape of a florist, but his soulmate looks otherworldly covered in ferns and creeping vines and giant chrysanthemum blooms. 

Yunho drops a quick kiss to his neck that makes their connection spark at the touch, like an electric zap from touching a live wire. Arousal burns sudden and bright in his gut to match and Hongjoong closes his eyes against the dizzying rush. Maybe if he asks nicely Yunho will be kind enough to push Hongjoong down into the mattress afterwards and pound him brainless so he can forget about this hellscape of a day.

“Yunho,” Hongjoong groans, reaching back to fist his hand in Yunho’s hair and pushing his hips against Yunho’s groin where he’s half-hard already. “You should fuck me.”

His soulmate says nothing in favor of cupping a handful of water collected from the showerhead to bail over Hongjoong’s head. “I think I should put you to bed.”

“Come on, Yunho, I’ll be so good for you,” Hongjoong begs with a pathetic whine building in his throat. “_ Please _.”

Yunho spins him around to kiss him slowly and wet from the stream of water falling above their heads. Hongjoong leans into him, sliding his hands up the slight swell of Yunho’s pectorals, over Yunho's nipples pebbled up tight against his palms, until he can circle his arms around those wide shoulders. His fingers slip from the water when he tries to clench his fingers in the soft fuzz at Yunho's nape. This is more like it, Hongjoong sighs quietly. This is the kind of relief he’s used to, the kind he craves when real life begins to be too much.

Or so he thought.

Yunho breaks away panting. “We’re not going to fuck, hyung. I told you before remember?” Long careful fingers trace the outline of his bottom lip when Hongjoong pouts. “Not until you get settled with your family. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret later by moving too fast.”

“I’ve already had your dick in my mouth,” Hongjoong growls dark. “How is this any different? Please, Yunho, I need it. I need _ you_, nothing I do with you could ever be something I regret. It’ll be good stress relief for both of us.”

Yunho smiles at him, but it’s a sad thing that doesn’t even make the scar in his cheek bunch awkwardly beneath his eye like Hongjoong has grown used to. “I think you’re too inside your own head to know what’s good for you and what isn’t, so I’m going to have to do it for you, and I say us fucking when you can’t even enjoy it isn’t going to do either of us any favors.” Yunho rubs his hands down along Hongjoong’s shoulders until he can squeeze their hands together. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Bizarrely, this is what finally cracks through to Hongjoong’s deepest emotional scar. His chin crumples first, then his mouth, until he’s sobbing into Yunho’s chest trying to bury the sound into his soulmate’s skin. 

“She’s always taken everything good from me,” he wails, finally not trying to hold anything back. “I’m terrified she’s going to take you too, Yunho. What am I going to do if that happens? How am I supposed to cope? Electronics and a bed and a door and my freedom are one thing, but _ you—_”

Yunho reaches out to turn the shower off. It makes Hongjoong’s hiccuping crying sound so much louder and he tries to swallow some of it down to no avail. 

“How would she take me away? Hongjoong, I’m not going anywhere and she can’t make me.”

Hongjoong cries harder because he knows, _he knows_, what exactly she can do if he doesn’t agree to her insane contract. 

“Look at me.” Yunho jerks his chin up with a thumb digging underneath Hongjoong's bottom lip. “Hongjoong?”

“She’s going to take you away and make it so I’ll never be able to see you again.” Hongjoong burbles out between horrible breath-stealing cries. “She’ll—she’s—”

Yunho stares down at him visibly concerned. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Hongjoong bundles himself into one of Yunho’s shirts that’s so big the neckline slides ride off his shoulder and positions himself in the middle of Yunho’s bed with his jacket folded neatly in his arms. Yunho watches him take out the hidden papers with his mouth in a thin, worried line and his hair still dripping water down his neck. Hongjoong would much rather be chasing those droplets with his mouth instead of reading through the godawful packet again, but...

Hongjoong smooths the creases out and hands the three pages out for Yunho to take. 

“It’s all here. Black and white, everything she can and _ will _ do to you if I don’t agree,” he says dully.

Yunho settles in next to him on the bed and begins carefully scanning the consequences laid out before them. His eyebrows furrow. Then his mouth pinches inward. Hongjoong picks at the scabs between his fingers and contemplates what it would take to ferry the two of them off to a remote island in the middle of nowhere so he and Yunho could live in peace. Yunho sucks in a tight breath next to him, Hongjoong can only guess he’s made it to the first devastating line.

“If you don’t sign this contract, she’s going to have me arrested for breaking and entering and stealing her jewelry?” Yunho scoffs. “She knows that was you, right?”

“Yeah.” Hongjoong flops back and closes his eyes. “But you know what would make a better headline? ‘Sasaeng breaks into the home of beloved actress Park Misun and absconds with precious mementos from her husband and son’.” Hongjoong spreads his arms wide. “One word to the right media presence and you’re toast. Goodbye career, goodbye freedom, hello jail.”

Yunho chews his bottom lip. “There’s more.”

Hongjoong sighs, dropping his arms from their grand display. “I know.”

Because he does know, and part of the reason he'd hidden these pages away was so he wouldn't have to come to terms with the extent of his mother's cruelty while in the company of the people he calls his friends. Park Misun's brand is blackmail and heavy handed subterfuge, telegraphed from the start by the way she collects contracts from her own fucking son like she's collecting pennies and had him hand off waivers to Yunho in the back room of that stupid fucking useless banquet just because she knew Yunho would be helpless but to agree. _Security waiver my ass_, Hongjoong grits his teeth.

“Why didn’t you show this to Yeosang and the rest? Surely with all of us putting our heads together we could come up with—”

“Yunho.” Hongjoong stops him. “We have three days together. Let’s just make the most of it, okay? For just a little while we can pretend everything is normal.”

Yunho shakes his head. “You sound like you’ve already given up.”

Hongjoong doesn’t respond. Yunho doesn’t try to make him speak either, just continues to read over the packet while low level traffic noise and the muffled sound of people going about their days in adjacent apartments filters in through the walls. It’s something Hongjoong has never experienced living at the top of a building that houses five major celebrities, each with their own floors and enough soundproofing to keep anyone from hearing each other scream.

Yunho laughs incredulously and throws the papers at the opposite wall. They both watch the thin pages flutter uselessly down to the floor after only a few feet. 

“I’d really like to know how your mom already has a pre-filled police report ready to go claiming I _ kidnapped _ you from campus like a goddamn stalker.”

Someone two doors down is having a coughing fit. Maybe they have the flu or sucked water down the wrong pipe, Hongjoong doesn’t know. He’s got three days to familiarise himself with the sound before he goes back to the silent prison miles away on the other side of town.

He sighs. “Like I told you, I’m pretty sure she’s got someone high up on the police force on her payroll.”

“It has _ your _ signature at the bottom,” Yunho seethes.

“And a really good forger.” Hongjoong reaches out until he can claw his fingers into the worn soft cotton of Yunho’s sleep shirt still damp from recently wet skin. “Yunho—”

“No.” He can feel Yunho start to shake. “No, you can’t go back. You _ can’t_! We just have to figure out some way to get you out of this without also landing me in jail or shanked on the way to work.”

“Easier said than done.”

“This is so fucked up.” Yunho’s cheeks are blotchy red when he scrubs his fingers down the length of them, but the scar stays a stark white. Hongjoong traces the jagged edges and tries to tell himself it won’t be the last time. “So what is she going to do about the revenge porn? Surely paying off Seungho isn’t going to magically make the videos disappear.”

“I’m sure she’s got something planned to make both Seungho and Minsi go away.” Hongjoong shrugs, so emotionally empty at this point the whole situation just seems comical. “God knows if she’s got a secret hitman, too.”

Yunho shifts until he’s on his side like an open parenthesis. “You know what? Your mom fucking sucks.”

Hongjoong laughs and laughs...and _ laughs _. His chest stutters once, twice, and—oh—now he’s caught in the middle of another round of wracking sobs. Yunho folds him gently to his chest, wrestles the blankets over their bodies and does his best to wipe away the worst of the tears with his thumbs. Hongjoong thinks he can feel their connection flare up bright and searing just before he succumbs to the exhaustion sucking him down into the deep abyss of sleep, but, by the time he can parse the zinging zap of energy, he’s already lost to dreams.

**\--------------**

The dreamscape he wakes up in is so jagged and sharp at the edges Hongjoong is almost afraid he’s going to wake up with puncture wounds. It’s the crash again, but instead of smooth highway covered in mixtures of brake fluid and oil and blood there is only sharp rock-like formations jutting up from the ground like nightmarish stalagmites. The cars are crumpled worse in this version, all twisted metal as if a giant had come through to ball them up like waste paper. Clearly his turmoil from the real world is infecting this place too.

Yunho is nowhere to be found. He supposes tonight just isn’t a dream share kind of night and carefully picks his way towards the gathering of people standing just outside the jagged roadway. 

An ambulance wail cuts through the silent still shot of the wreck. No actual car manifests though, only the sound and the phantom red lights glinting off the balls of metal. Hongjoong has to hold his hand to his mouth when one pass of the red beam exposes a delicate arm flopped just outside the thing that used to be Yunho’s parents’ car. It’s white. Ghostly. Thick black lines drip from the point of the index finger.

His mother is speaking to the driver in this part of the dream. She’s still smiling, digging around in her purse for the wad of bills hidden in its depths. 

Hongjoong creeps closer. Every step feels as if he’s walking through molasses, but eventually he finds his way to them and squints.

The driver is toweling off his sweat stained forehead with a rag. His mother stops smiling and the phantom shape of her turns to look right at him as if she can see the dream self Hongjoong inhabits for real. Police officers milling in the background turn into vague human-shaped blurs. 

Heart pounding in his throat, Hongjoong forces his legs to move through the drag of whatever it is holding him back. He _ knows _ this man, if only he could just see his face—

The driver’s hand falls away to fold the rag into the starched seam of his uniform pants.

Hongjoong _ knows _ this man, not because he was the primary driver for their family when he was young, but because it’s a face he’s seen more times than he can count when he needed to escape the stifling atmosphere of his mother’s home.

_ Mr. C. _

**\--------------**

The next morning, Hongjoong slips out of Yunho’s arms, placing a gentle closed mouth kiss to Yunho’s cheek and scribbling a note about grabbing breakfast on the nightstand. He quietly makes his way out of the apartment with his phone clutched tight in his fist and a single message lighting up the screen:

**UNKNOWN NUMBER** [2:58 AM]  
this is jongho, i got your number from wooyoung  
we need to talk  
alone if possible

They meet in the relative seclusion of a table situated at the very back corner of a Starbucks during morning rush hour, located at the exact midway point between Yunho’s apartment and Wooyoung’s building. It’s amazing what people will overlook in the midst of searching for their caffeine high just before work or school. Things like Hongjoong with his ridiculous face mask and his oversized sunglasses tapping the edge of his phone against the faux-marble tabletop like a nervous twitchy junkie waiting for their dealer holding the next fix. Eventually he gets bored of jumping at the sound of the door chime every ten seconds and pulls out his earbuds and a pad of paper in a bid to jot down some lyrics or brainstorm while he waits.

Jongho finds him six pages deep in scribbled out lyrics, half-formed notes to finesse out of a program later.

“You look like a serial killer,” Jongho informs him bland with his hands holding a tray with two muffins and aggressively cream colored coffees. “Thanks for meeting me, hyung.”

Hongjoong stuffs his phone and his notes back into his pocket with a curt nod. “What is this about, Jongho? No offense to you, but I hardly know you and calling me out here like this at three in the morning is a little…”

Without answering, Jongho divvies out the goods and goes off to return the tray. When he comes back, after settling down in the chair opposite Hongjoong, he props his hands on the table with his fingers laced together. He looks a little like a man going to confession.

“My father is not without sin, Hongjoong-hyung.” Jongho finally admits after a moment of awkward silence. “And there are some family secrets I think you should be aware of that might help your situation.”

Hongjoong eyes him warily. He knows now that Jongho’s father was the driver of their car the night Yunho’s parents were killed, not that Jongho is aware of that fact—clearly. “I’m listening.”

“My dad injured his back on a construction site before he became a security guard for your mom’s company that never healed properly and he took—he _ takes—_a lot of pain medication to help deal with the lingering effects. Damn near broke his neck.” Jongho picks at the sugared edge of his muffin, crumbs tumbling to the table. “He, ah, he was actually a chauffeur for the longest time before he was reassigned.”

“A chauffeur.”

Jongho nods. “Mostly only drove your mom around to events or your dad to the hospital charity banquets. Anyway, there was a night…your mom apparently had a prescription for something and gave my dad an opiate pain killer that he wasn’t used to. When it finally kicked in, he was already half-way down the road to a late night event and his vision blurred to the point he couldn’t tell the streetlights from headlights.”

Determined to see this conversation through, Hongjoong keeps his hands below the table where Jongho can’t see them, pinching between his fingers to stop himself from freezing up from the reminder of that night. He should be _ used _ to this by now, dammit, just last night he’d dreamed about the scene all over again, he should be _immune_. 

“I’m sure you, um, you remember what happened next,” Jongho whispers hoarse. “Some people were killed, your mom told him she’d take care of everything and paid off _ a lot _ of first responders to the scene including the police.”

Hongjoong can only guess what happened next: Misun had probably paid everyone off with cash and promises to appear at parties in exchange for sweeping the whole nasty business under the rug. She’d managed to get the people strewn on the hood of the opposite car pronounced DOA along with their son in the backseat, a freak accident from losing control of the wheel and slamming into the sidewall at speed. Yunho had been old enough to know his name back then, so she couldn’t give him a fake identity, but she’d somehow gotten him shipped off conveniently as a lost lamb to the nearest orphanage to be put on a waitlist for the next available foster home.

“Fucking christ.” Hongjoong holds his head. “What the fuck. He just told you all of this?” 

“When I was old enough, yes.” Jongho continues to shred the muffin to bits without actually trying to eat it. “As a life lesson on knowing right from wrong and to always hold myself accountable when my father never did.”

“Fucked up life lesson if you ask me,” Hongjoong mutters into his coffee. 

Jongho doesn’t disagree and stares deeply into his own mug. “Have you ever gone through the top floor suite? At the building my dad guards, I mean.”

The line for coffee is out the door now, wrapped around the building as people wait for their morning cuppa in the blistering cold. Hongjoong flexes his fingers against the warmed ceramic in his hands and considers spinning a lie to make this conversation end. Jongho is an unknown entity and this whole interaction has his teeth set so on edge he can feels his molars throb from the pressure.

He settles, finally after a long debate with himself, on the truth. “No. That section is locked with a keycard, I don’t have access.”

Jongho stops shredding his muffin in favor of reaching into his coat pocket, and Hongjoong tenses, paranoia having him convinced Jongho is about to pull a weapon in the middle of a busy coffee shop. 

He doesn’t.

Instead, Jongho slides a white card and a haphazardly folded piece of notebook across the table with two fingers. Hongjoong takes it, confused, and finds the paper covered in chicken scratch number and letter combos.

“You might want to find out what’s up there for yourself. My dad is under strict orders not to let you inside the building again until you've delivered that contract, but he's agreed to turn the other way just once during his shift tonight. 9 PM.”

“_How _ do you even have this?” Hongjoong hastily shoves the new pieces of information into his coat pocket. “And why give it to me? You could just as easily go up there yourself.”

“Even if I went in myself, anything I found would be dismissed by the fact I trespassed to get it since I’m not on the list of approved personnel.” Jongho screws his mouth up. “But _ you _ are so it has to be you. I stole the card out of my dad’s wallet and made copies of the passcodes I found. He thinks you’re just going in to hide your laptop and your clothes and shit before your mom locks you up back home.”

Jongho doesn’t flinch when Hongjoong rips off his sunglasses to glare at him fiercely. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re doing this.”

“Because Wooyoung loves you,” Jongho says simply. “Because I hate your fucking family. Because this has been a long time coming and I’m sick and tired of watching my father drink himself to sleep almost every night from the guilt. Take your pick, I don’t care. This farce my father is stuck in needs to end and he’ll testify if it comes down to it.”

Hongjoong fists the card and the tiny slip of paper in his pocket. “And if it ends with your dad incarcerated? You’re okay with that?”

Jongho purses his mouth and takes a long sip of his coffee. “I don’t have to like it, but so be it.”

“Harsh.”

The man across from him wilts down until his elbows rest on the table, seemingly ages twenty years while rubbing at his face. “Maybe he’ll come out the other side a better, happier, _sober_ man after serving his time. I’ve got my mom, my brothers, and now San and Wooyoung to lean on when things get tough.” The look Jongho pins him with is intense and intensely sad. “Who do you have?”

** _\--------------_ **

It doesn’t occur to Hongjoong that his mother has been uncharacteristically silent through this whole ordeal: no texts, no insane amount of missed calls, no threatening voicemails left at god knows what time of morning when she’s high on prescription meds or drunk.

Nothing.

He should have known better.

** _\--------------_ **

Too unnerved by the whole situation to risk going out into the world again, where Seungho and that voyeur psychopath soulmate of his Minsi could harass him, Hongjoong opts to stay at Yunho’s apartment while he’s at work. Hongjoong also needs to email at least four professors and two TAs about coursework, but they’ve always been lenient with him because of his social status, not to mention the fact he’s always been so fastidious about turning everything in on time despite his mother’s attempts at keeping him out late enough to miss deadlines, so he’s not especially worried they’re going to kick him out this close to graduation. 

He needs to come up with a plan. More than that, Hongjoong feels as if he’s missing key elements in the bigger picture. Seungho and Minsi teaming up to blackmail his family for money as revenge for breaking up with him Hongjoong gets, he understands that much because the motivation is clear. Misun adamantly refusing to allow her son to even think about touching his soulmate even when they were in the same room? Forcing Yunho to sign waivers about security risks? Having Hongjoong stumble in front of a crowded banquet hall like her personal puppet? What made Jongho trust him after meeting _once_ for only a few hours? 

_ Unclear. _

...And confusing as all hell.

Hopefully whatever he finds in the top floor of that building tonight will provide some much needed clarity.

** _\--------------_ **

Yunho comes home just after two in the afternoon, dropping a kiss to Hongjoong’s mouth, a sandwich from work into his lap, and troops himself to his bed to fall into it face first with an exhausted whine. It’s cute enough that Hongjoong momentarily forgets he’s been going in mental circles for hours and puts the sandwich into the fridge for them to share later, can’t resist the urge to flop onto Yunho’s back, big and warm and welcoming. 

“Hi,” he says obnoxiously high pitched into Yunho’s ear while Yunho lets out a pained ‘oof’ from the sudden weight. “How’s the weather?”

“Cold,” Yunho says muffled into the bed sheets. He reaches up behind himself to knead at the curve of Hongjoong’s knees folded over his hips. “Make any progress?”

Hongjoong hadn’t told him about the meeting with Jongho that morning, probably isn’t going to since the whole thing could be one big red herring that leads to nothing and nowhere, only existing to waste Hongjoong’s time and energy better spent here with his soulmate before he’s wrenched away.

Yunho shifts beneath him until he’s digging cold fingers into Hongjoong’s back pockets, tugging him down until Hongjoong is losing his breath on the short fall to Yunho’s chest. Their connection buzzes just beneath his skin, all burning staticy desire with nowhere to go.

“Take a nap with me,” Yunho persuades, “We can look over everything again with fresh eyes before I have to go to my own night class.”

This must be what love feels like, Hongjoong thinks. Basking in the simple touch of another person and instantly feeling as if even the worst of his anxiety fueled nightmares are lightyears away. “Okay,” he says, “A nap it is,” and allows Yunho to fold the comforter over their heads, rolling them to their sides so Yunho can leave his mouth on Hongjoong’s neck just open enough that Yunho can slide his teeth over the swell of bone beneath skin. His breath is warm and humid and steady.

“Hey,” Hongjoong breaks through the drowsy heat pulling them both under. “Yunho?” 

Yunho only hums vaguely. Hongjoong traces the bridge of his soulmate’s nose and wonders if he could somehow transfer the slight bend of skin into the baseline of a song, something precious and unique with a drumbeat to match. 

“I love you.”

“You too,” Yunho yawns, blurry, “lots ‘n lots.”

He drops off relatively quickly after that, the stress of work and the bullshit Hongjoong has managed to drag in behind him catching up to Yunho in one fell swoop. 

Hongjoong stays awake to run his fingers through the slightly sweaty hair at the base of Yunho’s skull and thinks about the future.

**\--------------**

Yunho has one night class from 7PM to 10PM, which gives Hongjoong only an hour to investigate Building C. He keeps his itinerary a secret so as not to worry anyone. Jongho knows he’ll be there, as will Jongho’s father, so if anything happens Hongjoong will know immediately who to blame. He’s fairly certain Mr. Choi isn’t about to go snitching about letting Hongjoong into a building he’s technically not supposed to be in, but...

The security guard colors when Hongjoong pops out of his hired ride, ducking down so his double chin folds into the collar of his uniform shirt. He nods once when Hongjoong pauses at the entrance waiting for resistance or to be turned away.

“I’m sorry, Hongjoong-ssi. Truly.” Whispered to him under the guard’s breath before Mr. Choi is directing his gaze back to the street. 

Hongjoong has nothing to say to that, only nods back curt, before taking the elevator to the top floor. He has to swipe the keycard Jongho gave him to get there, which makes a violent booming ring over the intercom before the elevator ferries him away to whatever is being kept on Floor 7. 

A more modern suite of offices compared to those in the floors below greets him when the doors open, along with a few cabinets against one far wall and a setup of servers in another corner. This room, an open concept spanning the majority of the top floor, is moderately clean and free of dust as if it actually sees foot traffic instead of rotting like the rest of the building. Odd, considering Hongjoong has never once seen anyone actually set foot in this building since he’d been coming here at the start of college when his mother told him it was open should he need to study and, oh, would Hongjoong answer some emails like a good boy while she refused to hire an extra intern while her heavily pregnant assistant was on leave.

The most promising place to start is a large desk offset from the rest, like a manager’s station, with a pricy looking setup of three monitors. Pulling out the paper Jongho had given him earlier that morning along with one of his many USB sticks in case he needs to transfer anything important, Hongjoong tries a few combinations just to see if they work and is shocked to find he’s allowed entry after the second try. How exactly Jongho came into possession of them is another matter entirely, one Hongjoong will have to address once he’s done here.

Most of what he finds saved on the desktop are image files, empty contracts for easy access, a few links to news articles now defunct and broken, some half-filled out media requests clearly drafted by someone who’s only taken a brief 30 minute how-to on social media interactions. Nothing incriminating. Nothing _helpful_.

**K.Hongjoong** [9:15 PM]  
what exactly am i looking for here?

**UNKNOWN NUMBER** [9:16 PM]  
Look for a folder labeled with a bunch of numbers

**K.Hongjoong** [9:16 PM]  
that’s it????

**UNKNOWN NUMBER** [9:17 PM]  
That’s it.  
…….and hyung?

**K.Hongjoong** [9:18 PM]  
yes? 

**UNKNOWN NUMBER** [9:20 PM]  
nothing nevermind forget it just  
Good luck.

Taking Jongho’s advice, Hongjoong searches through the computer's documents until he finds a whole nested line of folders saved only with numbers and the occasional letter as their names. A whole host of incriminating files veritably fall into his lap_—_contracts with shady photographers, license agreements between Park Misun Industries and various gossip sites, four contracts with models Hongjoong knows Misun would never use because they’re too pretty and she’s insufferably insecure about being upstaged, copies of Yunho’s waivers, and_—_

A hefty accounting statement in the form of an excel spreadsheet of payoffs to the local police not quite so cleverly disguised as ‘security meetings’.

Why anyone would hide their dirty laundry so blatantly out in the open like this is...Hongjoong doesn’t know what it is. Either his mother was foolhardy enough to believe she’d never be found out or someone on the payroll wanted it to be found. Hongjoong won’t let this opportunity fall to the wayside and copies everything he’s found to the USB, including some folders that he hadn’t checked yet, just so he can get out of here. The office is creepy at night and he hadn’t bothered to turn on any overhead lights aside from the one strip of fluorescent bulbs that are perpetually drawing power. 

Just as the loading bar gets to about 90%, he can hear the first stirrings of the elevator coming to life. No one else is supposed to be here, not at this time of night_—_or any night really_—_yet he’s definitely hearing the elevator buzzing its way up the shaft of the building to his floor. Something in his gut is screaming it's not Mr. Choi making an unplanned visit, either.

The usb finishes downloading with a merry ding coming from the computer. Hongjoong snatches it away, hits the power button to the tower, and dashes to the door leading to the staircase. He manages to open it without too much sound, shifting his body to the other side and ducking out of view of the glass window pane looking down the steps. He knows from experience the stairs have motion activated lighting, so he can’t descend just yet if he wants to leave undetected.

The elevator dings. Hongjoong crouches low, keeping a hand to the knob of the stairwell door only barely unlatched, and waits.

Two men step out.

“I thought you said he’d be here?” 

Hongjoong’s blood runs instantly cold. That was Kim Beomseok. That was his _ father’s _ voice. 

“H-he was, sir, I let him in not even an hour ago and he hasn’t come back down.”

Kim Beomseok scoffs. “Well he’s obviously not here _ now _. What exactly am I paying you for if you can’t even get this one thing right? Maybe I should revoke my payments toward all that debt you’ve been carrying for fifteen years.”

The security guard drops to his knees. “No! Please, sir!”

Hongjoong watches through the gap as his father sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Get up. Just_—_make sure he’s not fucking around in one of the lower floors instead. I need to make a call.”

“O-of course, sir, right away,” Mr. Choi stutters, bowing deeply before hurrying back to the elevator.

Kim Beomseok waits less than thirty seconds before he’s on the phone. Hongjoong can hear the ringing echoing back to his position thanks to the yawning emptiness of the top floor. The call connects after only two rings.

“You can call the boys off,” his father says matter-of-fact into the receiver. “My good for nothing son apparently didn’t bother staying for more than an hour before leaving. We’ll have to get him another way.”

Hongjoong covers his mouth to keep from screaming. What the fuck. What the _ fuck _? He doesn’t catch what the other person says, too busy trying not to be sick all over the company steps and giving away his hidden position. His father laughs good naturedly back. 

“Kids these days,” Beomseok chuckles with a shake of his head. “How’s your daughter, by the way? My wife keeps forgetting to tell me how the training is going. I’m assuming she’s doing well?”

Hongjoong strains his ears, but try as he might, he can’t make out what the other person is saying. He knows they’re male by the deep baritones muffling through the doorway. 

His father touches the windowpane directly across from Hongjoong’s line of sight. “Yes, our deal is still on. Yes. _ Yes _, my son will be ready when the time comes. I won’t let you or your daughter down, we will handle this little hiccup like we’ve handled everything else.” Kim Beomseok’s nails scratch screechy little lines against the window pane while he waits for a response. “The wedding will go off without a hitch, sir, no need to worry. I promise, I_—_”

Hongjoong swallows bile. Wedding? What wedding? Since when did his father give two flying fucks about _ weddings_?

Beomseok ends the call with a flat, “Yes, sir.”

The call culminates to Kim Beomseok flinging his cellphone against the nearest desk, shattering the screen. Hongjoong only barley keeps himself from flinching and activating the lights as his father, the usually well-mannered and kept together doctor, kicks a small end table to splinters in a fit of rage. He only stops when the security guard enters through the elevator again, panting into his knees.

“He’s not in the building, sir,” Mr. Choi gasps out. “I’ve checked every floor and all the bathrooms. He must have slipped out when we were coming up.”

“That’s fine.” Kim Beomseok seethes. “Fan-_fucking_-tastic.”

Hongjoong stays crouched awkwardly against the door, keeping a hand over his gaped open mouth, counting out the seconds until at least an hour had passed. When no one else came up to check the building, he runs as fast as his legs can carry him down the six flights of stairs to the side exit of the building and into the brisk late evening air. He doesn’t stop running until he’s four blocks away and his face has gone numb. It might be from the cold or from the shock, either way Hongjoong doesn’t care.

He's got questions and _by god_ was Jongho going to give him some answers.

**\--------------**

Hongjoong makes it home only five minutes before Yunho is walking through the door with a heavy satchel flung around his shoulders and a world weary sigh falling from his mouth. His cheeks are a blotchy red from the wind and it makes the faded white scar almost gleam under the shitty overhead lighting. Hongjoong watches him toes off his shoes in the entrance from the relative safety of Yunho’s couch, his nerves frayed and raw and his lungs still burning from his sprint.

“Oh, hyung! I thought you’d be asleep by the time I got back.” Yunho grins at him at once cheerful and bright eyed. “Did you have a bunch of work to catch up on?” 

Hongjoong trembles all over, which Yunho immediately assumes is from the cold and cups his hands on Hongjoong’s cheeks and his neck, the fern leaves on Yunho’s fingers trailing invisible lightning on the petals of the giant carnations along Hongjoong’s throat. “You’re so cold! Why didn’t you turn the heat up?”

“Wanted you to warm me up,” Hongjoong says instead of telling Yunho he’d been busy making a mad dash across town. His fingers seem to fit perfectly over Yunho’s larger ones when he reaches up to hold them tighter to his skin. “Can we take a shower?”

Yunho furrows his brows at him like he’s trying to see through Hongjoong down into the secretive shitty core, down the dirt and the blood and the motor oil tainting his soul, and nods. “Yeah,” Yunho says whisper soft, “Yeah, come on, let’s get you warmed up.”

In the shower, Yunho mouths over his throat, taking his sweet time to map the swirling loops of Hongjoong’s marks with his teeth and his tongue so carefully determined all Hongjoong can do is hold on to his shoulders and wait, whimpering at the way their marks seem to sing to each other. His skin pulses with the beat of the water over their shoulders. Part of him feels like a magnet, like the only direction he can be moved is closer to Yunho’s heat and body, molded by Yunho’s hands kneading along his spine and cupping over his ass slick with water and soap. 

“Fuck,” he swears when Yunho’s fingers slip over his hole and his skin pebbles up tight from the shy promise of more. “Fuck, please, I know you said we shouldn’t but_—_”

“And I stand by it,” Yunho husks into his ear, biting down against the swirl of cartilage and sucking the lobe into his mouth just to feel Hongjoong shiver. “We have a lifetime to look forward to, jagiyah. Quit trying to rush me.”

Hongjoong notes Yunho’s fingers still slide just so over the crack of his ass. “‘M not, I just_—_” Yunho puts just the slightest amount of pressure behind his forefinger and Hongjoong chokes on the sizzling shock of it resting on the edge of breaching the rim. His knees shake, groin _aching_ with how turned on he is with just this small amount of touching, of Yunho’s easy ownership.

“_God,” _ he sobs into Yunho’s chest when Yunho growls something dark and hungry against his neck, biting the skin on his shoulder and letting the tip of his finger dip into the hot greedy clutch of his body. Hongjoong feels like he’s going to shake apart, like he’s going to _ die_, if Yunho doesn’t do something_—__anything—_to ease the heat boiling in his stomach and climbing up his throat in breathy little moans. “ _ Yunho—_”

“Let me take care of you,” Yunho says, sliding his wet mouth up to swallow the embarrassed pitchy mewling noises Hongjoong can’t seem to hold back. The hand not driving Hongjoong fucking crazy opens the in shower lotion Hongjoong had brought back with him, pours a generous dollop down over the fingers resting unmoving against his hole. Yunho grabs the sharp cut of Hongjoong’s hip to push him back against his finger hard enough that it pops through to the second knuckle in one glorious slick-smooth glide. 

Hongjoong can only reach up to circle his arms around Yunho’s shoulders to hang on for dear life while Yunho works him over inch by inch, slow and steady and so good his legs are wobbling before Yunho can work a second finger in. Yunho takes his weight, keeps him steady with an arm around his waist and his mouth sucking bruises wherever he can reach_—_Hongjoong’s neck, his throat, his collarbones, ducking until he can bite at the stiff peak of his nipple while Hongjoong nearly screamed from the intensity.

“Come on, hyung,” Yunho coos some nebulous amount of time later. Ages, _ years _ , all while keeping his fingers and his wrist moving at a steady pace and obstinately _ refusing _ to touch Hongjoong’s cock leaking like a sieve shoved up against his thigh. “Be a good boy for me and come on my fingers, I know you can.”

“Y-you can’t,” Hongjoong trails off with a shuddering gasp, “You can’t tell me_—e_ what to do.”

Yunho only presses in harder, faster, rubbing up and in at just the right pace that_—_yeah, Hongjoong could come from this, just this, and probably will within the next ten seconds. His whole body feels stretched thin like a rubber band being put under a stress test, stretched out over too long of a distance. He nearly falls if not for Yunho’s sturdy hands holding him up, ready and waiting to catch him when his knees finally give out.

When he comes, it’s with Yunho’s name in his mouth, Yunho’s fingers in his ass, and Yunho’s skin beneath his nails. He pants uselessly against Yunho’s chest while his soulmate jerks off quick, a handful of barely there tugs, and watches the swirl of their combined cum sluice down and away thanks to the mostly lukewarm water.

**\--------------**

Yunho is still dead asleep when Hongjoong wakes up the next morning feeling rested and clear headed for the first time in what feels like months. They hadn’t shared dreams that night, which isn’t the most unexpected thing since they’ve gone days without the weird mental connection thrusting them together before they met for real. Hongjoong gives himself a few minutes to lazily drowse under the weight of Yunho’s arm flung out over his stomach, hand cupped protectively over Hongjoong’s naked hip. Only a little after 5 AM, the sunlight filtering in through the curtains gives the whole room an otherworldly glow, including the drool making its slow trek down the side of Yunho’s mouth.

Hongjoong pads out to the living room with his laptop, fishing out the usb he’d used the night before, and plops down with them both propped on his knees and gets to work. Beneath his hands, the full extent of his parents’ cruelty blooms out before him. Charitable donations to seemingly random organizations coincide with lucrative contracts both for his mother’s firm and his father’s hospital.

At 7 AM, creeping closer to 8 and the time Yunho’s alarm will go off, Hongjoong stumbles on a contract with names he’s seen at least twice already. Some new actress on the scene has a _ training _ contract exclusively with his mother, unheard of considering his mother’s temper and her perpetual fear of being upstaged. Two names stand out: Shin Youkyung and her father, Shin Sangchul.

Shin Sangchul, the current chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department.

Hongjoong clutches at his head as the first stirrings of a stress migraine begin to form. There’s a connection here between the police and his family that Hongjoong can’t quite seem to thread together, a vital piece of the whole woven tapestry missing in just the right position that Hongjoong can’t see what it is he’s missing here, but one thing is clear:

He has to return home.

This time he’s not panicked. More than anything Hongjoong just feels _ numb _ as he goes through the motions of repacking his clothes and his belongings. The laptop he slides into the nightstand drawer that he clears of the detritus Yunho stowed away: pencils, sticky notes, an old charger that’s broken at one end, and a half-used bottle of lube. His music equipment, like the microphone and a small 9-button soundboard, he stashes in a shoe box he finds at the back of Yunho’s closet and leaves it there with a note that says simply, ‘I’ll be back for this, don’t throw out’. The contract he folds into one pocket of his school bag.

He’s not planning on leaving for good, but he can’t stay, not right now. Not until he’s finished with the whole nasty business of cutting out toxic family once and for all. Yunho deserves a soulmate that doesn’t carry around familial baggage so heavy it drags Yunho down with him.

Yunho blearily blinks up at him when Hongjoong sits down on the edge of the mattress. “Mornin’,” he sleepily mumbles out. 

“Good morning,” Hongjoong says, fully dressed with his school bag flung across his chest. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Yunho yawns and falls back into droopy-eyed slumber. “Class?” 

Hongjoong’s throat clicks when he swallows. “Mhm.” 

He keeps his gaze focused on the sleep soft expression on Yunho’s face, at his dimples, his mouth, the lone curl of an errant cowlick reaching upward from his scalp. He swallows again and his throat is still dry. “I’ll see you later, okay? I’ll be _right __back_.”

Yunho mumbles something that might be agreement just as his eyes close again and his mouth drops open just slightly in his sleep. Hongjoong leans over to place one brief kiss to the scar on Yunho’s cheek before he’s out the door and ordering an Uber with the credit card he generally opts not to use if he can help it, not that it matters anymore...considering.   
  
His call goes through on the first ring. “Where do you want me?”  
  
“I knew you’d come to your senses,” his mother crows in triumph. “Come to the radio station, I need your voice for an advertising segment and then we’ll discuss the terms of your punishment.” Hongjoong grits his teeth hard enough it feels as if they begin to crack, like he’s going to grind them into dust. “I only ever want what’s best for you, Hongjoong-ah. This way we can control the narrative around your soul connection. We can be a family again and all that nasty business with that_—_that _ boy _ can be put behind us once and for all.”

Hongjoong has no idea if she means Yunho or Wooyoung or Seungho, hell maybe even Jongho at this point. He’s not sure he cares anyway.

Armed with at least a small amount of information now, Hongjoong has a _plan _and, hopefully by the end of it, he'll be back home in Yunho's embrace before anything drastic happens.


	5. Where Love is King (rock bottom isn't so bad)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: gun violence

While he waits on the sidewalk for his ride to arrive, Hongjoong makes one more_—__l__ast—_phone call.

Jongho answers on the fifth attempt, because Hongjoong is relentless when he needs to be, and his voice is groggy and gravel rough. “What?”

“Jongho-yah,” Hongjoong says sweetly, though his jaw is clenched tight to keep from frothing at the mouth in public. “I hope you’re having a better morning than I am.”

There’s a sound over the line like Jongho is scrambling to get out of bed, a loud rustle of fabric and feet plodding on a hard surface at a rate that suggests he’s running. A door closes. Hongjoong waits while Jongho pants raggedly. “Hyung! Hyung, fuck, are you_—_”

“Whatever scheme you and your dad tried to pull didn’t work,” Hongjoong informs him. He feels strangely calm waiting out in the cold two blocks away from Yunho’s apartment and watching the world turn. There’s a tired grouping of office workers waiting by a bus stop across the street. A woman jogging behind three dogs with tangled leashes passes by. Hongjoong wonders what it’s like to live a normal life where you’re not at the center of some sprawling network of conspirators trying to keep you unknowingly under their thumb. “Tell me everything you know in the next five minutes or I’m calling Wooyoung to have him pull it out of you by force.”

“Wooyoung wouldn’t do that,” Jongho says, shaky. 

He’s nervous. _ Good_.

“Wooyoung loved me a hell of a lot longer than he’s _ known _ you and he’s got enough strength in one pinky to break your fucking arm if I asked him to.” Hongjoong grins at an elderly woman giving him a scandalized expression, offering up a jaunty wave as if her hearing a man casually threaten someone over the phone is an everyday occurrence, move along. “Spill.”

“Hyung_—_”

“Four minutes, thirty seconds.”

Hongjoong can hear the wet sounds of Jongho’s mouth opening and closing before he’s settling on, “Look, I didn’t want to get involved, but my dad is _ my dad_. Hyung, I can’t just say no to him when he needs me and he was _ begging _me to help.”

Hongjoong sighs. Some portion of himself, deep down wants to commiserate with Jongho for only doing what he thought was best, but Hongjoong has never had that kind of connection with a family member so mostly he just feels bored and exhausted at the seemingly endless betrayal. “Jongho, I have four minutes until an Uber gets here to take me back to my big evil egg donor where I will be kept locked up in a prison of her making, and all I’m asking for is to understand what the point of last night was even _ about_. You can explain that much to me.”

Jongho hesitates. “They wanted to set you up for a fall and then swoop in at the last second to ‘rescue’ you so you’d be forced to stay and do whatever your parents asked of you.”

“They? ‘They’ who?”

“My dad,” Jongho whispers, “and your dad, and half the night shift at the SMPD.”

Three minutes, ten seconds until his car arrives. Hongjoong scrubs his hand down his face in frustration. “But _ why_? Couldn’t they have done that without sending me on some wild goose chase at night for files that, what, weren’t even real?”

“Oh, the files were real alright. Did you look at the one with all the numbers like I told you to?”

Numbers. Numbers, numbers. Hongjoong wracks his brain, but as far as he remembers the only numbers folder was just a bunch of broken links saved to a text document and a corrupted pdf that wouldn’t open. He tells Jongho as much.

Jongho is silent for all of twenty seconds and Hongjoong is half afraid he’s hung up when Jongho finally responds, “Dad only fed me so much info, but if I understand it correctly...hyung, that building is set up in _ your _ name and it’s being used as a money laundering center for a bunch of shell corporations to funnel money. They were going to stage a raid, find you at the hub, and then have your dad make a big show of making it all go away in exchange for your loyalty.”

It’s so comical_—_so goddamn _ outrageous—_that all Hongjoong can do is laugh long and loud and hysterical while Jongho made huffing noises of confusion. His fucking life, Hongjoong cackles to himself, what a joke.

“Hyung?”

“Don’t call me that,” Hongjoong tells him, continuing to laugh and wiping at the tears running down his cheeks. One minute, twelve seconds and counting, but a black sedan is turning at the end of the street ahead of schedule. “One last thing, Jongho.” 

Jongho, sufficiently cowed, only hums. 

“Hurt Wooyoung and I will break your arms myself.”

He catches the tail end of an indignant, “What about San?” just as he’s pulling the sim card out of his phone and putting it safely tucked away in an inside pocket with the USB he’d kept from last night. His phone he throws to the ground as hard as he can so that it shatters and startles the same old woman who’d been innocently trailing behind her aging chihuahua sniffing along the ground trying to find the best shop front to piss in. He crushes the whole thing beneath his heel right as his ride pulls up and a middle-aged man leans out of his window.

“Kim Hongjoong?”

“That’s me,” he answers, throwing his night bag into the backseat. “You mind if I pay you with cash instead of through the app? My phone decided to die on me.”

His driver offers up a cord plugged into the cigarette outlet. “Fine by me, but if you need to charge it I have this charger with me that you're welcome to use.”

Hongjoong clicks his seatbelt into place and smiles at him through the rear view mirror. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”

**\--------------**

Leaving Yunho so abruptly after only having a few days together hurts more than Hongjoong had expected. His stomach aches, his hands shake, his knees feel like they’re full of pins and needles when he creakily makes his way out of the black sedan and shoves a handful of bills into the driver’s waiting hands. He doesn’t bother counting them out and the driver doesn’t say anything about being shortchanged or given a generous tip, so Hongjoong supposes it’s fine. Everything is fine.

The radio station looms up dark and foreboding in front of him, or at least Hongjoong wishes it would. It honestly just looks like any normal cement building with sun shielding darkened glass and a viciously modern logo swooping from one eave to the other in the shape of an M. 

An assistant is already impatiently tapping her foot in the entrance and waving Hongjoong in like he’s wasting all of her precious time better spent running cups of stale coffee to minor celebrity guests. Hongjoong foot catches on a crack in the sidewalk rising up to greet him and he stumbles once, only just managing to stay upright by sheer force of will.

“Will you hurry up?” The assistant hisses at him, already reaching out to smack his arm with the sharp metal bits at the top of her clipboard. “Misun-ssi’s break is almost about to start and you were due to appear _ yesterday_.”

Hongjoong bites his tongue. If Yunho were here, he’d have at least stopped to make sure Hongjoong was okay and wasn’t suffering, like, a spontaneous dislocation of his kneecap or something. But Yunho isn’t around and he isn’t going to be either. Not for a while.

Hongjoong squares his shoulders and steps into the building with its smoked glass windows and its glossy high-shine floors. This is _fine_.

**\--------------**

Park Misun welcomes her wayward son back into the fold with a sheaf of papers shoved into his chest and slap across his face that leaves an angry red gash where her ring_—_a new Cartier by the looks of it_—_catches his skin and drags it away. Hongjoong takes it with his eyes closed and his hands shaking clenched up in fists hidden away in his pockets. The same assistant that had hit him with the metal of her clipboard lets out a muffled ‘eep’ of surprised concern, bending down to pick up the papers so they don’t get shuffled out of order.

“Hello, mother.”

“Hello yourself, you ungrateful little fuck,” Misun sneers at him. Her mouth is tilted up in that way she gets when she thinks she’s gotten a leg up on her competition. “You’re recording this in ten minutes, get your voice ready because as soon as you’re finished recording, we’re going to have a little _ chat._”

Hongjoong stays silent, not even bothering to look at the collection of radio friendly bullshit he’s going to spew out later because it’s probably more of the same shit he’s done before. Park Misun presents a charity banquet benefiting orphans, he’ll probably say, come shake hands with myself and my mother as we welcome you to open your hearts and your wallets for a good cause. Probably there will be overproduced segments of crying children and his father’s voice echoing a friendly yet severe warning about the crime statistics of abandoned children, followed with a ham fisted plug about his hospital being the number one center for successful organ transplants in the last ten years. His cheek tingles as the warm sensation of blood runs down to soak into the edge of his cotton face mask.

Misun holds out her hand. “Phone.”

“Don’t have one.”

“Bullshit.” She slaps him again, this time on the other cheek though thankfully without another ring to bite into his skin.

The assistant tries to step in with a shy, “Ma’am, I don’t think_—_”

Misun rounds on her with a glare. “Because I don’t pay you to _ think_, I pay you to schedule appearances.” His mother starts patting him down starting at his pockets and growing increasingly frustrated the longer she remains empty handed. 

“I told you, I don’t have a phone anymore.” Hongjoong keeps his voice steady by focusing on a crack in the drywall on the other side of the recording booth where two sound engineers are carefully pretending not to stare. “Someone stepped on it this morning.”

Misun snaps her fingers at clipboard girl. “Call his number right now and then confiscate his phone. I don’t have time to play bad cop all day.”

She pivots on her heel and clomps back into the studio to jam oversized headphones over her ears and moving forward with a collection of listener questions. The assistant eyes him dubiously with her own phone held up between them.

“Do you really not have a phone?”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “I really, really don’t.” He points at the blood still sluggishly making its way down his face. “Think I’d put up with this just to hide a _ phone_? Please.”

She hesitates before nodding and pocketing her own cell. They wait quietly outside the studio doorway as his mother answers some inane question about her favorite brand of toothpaste that cleverly segues into another ad for one of Misun’s many sponsors. Misun motions for the girl next to him to bring her a new coffee, and Hongjoong would feel bad for her if she hadn’t hit him with the business end of her clipboard earlier_—_possibly he is still bitter about it. When she goes to pass him again, Hongjoong holds a hand out gently at the height of her shoulder and the assistant pauses with her eyebrows raised. 

“Yes?”

“Word to the wise, I’d find employment somewhere else.” He keeps his gaze steady at his mother smugly bouncing her script for the day against the tabletop. “Sooner rather than later.”

He drops his hand to let her get back to her glorified gopher job. Whether she ends up taking his advice is up to her, but at least Hongjoong won’t have to go to sleep with the guilt of letting someone who is maybe blameless in this whole business taking the fall and losing their source of income weighing on his conscience. He’s got enough of that to last a lifetime.

The advert Misun has him spewing less than ten minutes later is almost entirely the same drivel they trot him out for every few months. Come to a charity banquet hosted at the same auditorium next week, listen to an oration of the first few chapters of Park Misun’s newest book, turn out your pockets for a chance at a meet and greet spot and_—_

“We have a surprise announcement at the end of the presentation. Those lucky few Park Misun VIP Experience ticket holders will be able to sit down and chat with my mother, myself, and the lovely wo_—_” Hongjoong, blindsided, flubs the line and has to cough before he’s able to continue on, “The lovely woman I am so proud to call my soulmate. Tickets on sale now.”

"Terrible delivery," his mother informs him when he steps out of the recording area. "Just awful. Can you do anything right? Honestly, Hongjoong."

_ Patience_, he tells himself. _ Fuck this up and we never go home. _ It rankles even now_—_even after everything he’s been through and knows about the kind of person his mother is_—_that he’s still being treated like an employee incapable of pulling their weight instead of a son. A son who can’t even admit to having a male soulmate. 

Hongjoong has known two other minor celebrities in the closed circuit his mother keeps that have confided in him their soulmates are of the same sex, like the woman, who stars opposite his mother in most of her romantic comedies as the perpetual best friend, with a soulmate she keeps hidden from the world in a penthouse in France just because the soulmate happened to be a woman too. Or like the son of some big shot director that loved and supported his soulmate in his transition in private, yet denounced ever having been involved with someone who dared to undergo invasive surgery after invasive surgery to finally rid himself of horrible soul crushing dysphoria.

Swallowing back bile, Hongjoong stuffs his hands back in his pockets to pinch at the scabs between his fingers only just beginning to heal. The sharp sting helps to refocus on what he needs to do, not what he wants to_—_which is to run away to the nearest pap and give an impromptu interview about the shit his family is apparently trying to pull behind the scenes. But running won’t solve his dilemma of keeping Yunho safe and out of jail. It won’t solve the problem of potential blackmail held over his head by Seungho.

Hongjoong watches his mother sign off on some sponsor agreement. “So when do I get to meet this mystery woman?” 

His mother keeps her gaze focused on a new clipboard provided by the same assistant earlier, totally disregarding his existence. “At the banquet you just just announced.” She sucks her teeth and scribbles out an entire page, flinging it hard into her assistant’s chest. “Fix that by tomorrow or you’re fired and your name blacklisted.” 

To Hongjoong she says, “And then you’ll be visiting a chapel the next day for an engagement photoshoot.”

“You can’t be serious,” Hongjoong nearly whimpers, only holding himself off from the panic trying to weasel its way into his veins by digging the nail of his ring finger into the skin of his thumb until it gives way, breaking open so blood bubbles up hot and comforting beneath his fingertip. “How can we already be engaged? I don’t know her!”

Misun continues to ignore him, heels clicking against the linoleum as she leads him back toward the front of the building. “If someone hadn’t decided to steal from his poor, sweet mother and fuck off to that apartment building near Itaewon then we wouldn’t have to rush this arrangement so quickly.” Misun huffs angrily. “Not to mention the way you decided to flaunt your marks for the world to see the day I told our viewers we were going to show you and your soulmate meeting on stage. Do you just want to waste all of my hard earned time and money? Do you just enjoy making a fool and liar out of your mother?” She balls up her fist like she’s gearing up to strike him again and Hongjoong braces for impact while his mind reels. 

“H-how_—_” He clears his throat, but only manages a soft croaking, “Itaewon?”

Misun snaps her fingers and someone is calling a driver to round to the front of the building. She sighs and leans in close as if she’s being divulging state secrets. “Hongjoong-ah. Did you really think we wouldn’t know exactly where you went the instant you disappeared?” She tuts. “Here I thought you were such a smart boy and you didn’t even notice the tracking app on your phone. Ridiculous, I should have just kept you on a leash like a dog.”

Hongjoong experiences the next few hours in a state of near catatonic shock. He’s ferried to high-end shop that specializes in tailoring menswear where a heavily tattooed and muscular man with a camera the size of Hongjoong’s head photographs every single inch of his skin while another man, frail, maybe in his late seventies, takes careful measurements with an old cloth measure the color of faded buttercream. His mother makes clipped and angry comments about the reddish purple finger marks peeking over the edge of his underwear that Hongjoong ignores for the sake of his own sanity.

By now, Yunho should be up and at work pouring out drinks and making adorable latte art of curling ferns. He probably hasn’t realized Hongjoong isn’t actually in class yet. Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut tight against the flash of another photo. 

This is fine.

He can do this.

Hongjoong raises his arms when prompted and tunes out the low level background noise of Misun bitching at the photographer, at him, at someone on the phone, at the driver playing tetris in the front seat while they wait, at the old man only doing his job the best way he knows how from years of experience.

“That woman is a nightmare,” the man quietly whispers to him under his breath when he goes to measure the circumference of Hongjoong’s throat.

“Sir, you have no idea,” Hongjoong breathes back. He gets a sympathetic tap against his collarbone for the remark until Misun is yelling, "Will you hurry it up? We have a schedule to keep!"

**\--------------**

The tattooed man’s name is Youngchul he finds out later when Misun is finished yanking Hongjoong around town in a last minute dash for custom suits and getting measured for a set of rings.

“Your new bodyguard,” she tells him offhand. “Since you’re so hellbent on running off, your father and I decided it would be best if you had someone to watch over you.”

Youngchul says nothing, just stands stock still and frowns as hard he can at him right outside the door of Hongjoong’s bedroom. Or, at least, the place where a door used to be. They’d even removed the hinge plates from the molding. Hongjoong drops his overnight bag to his now bare mattress located on the floor and sighs.

“Does he talk?”

Misun scowls. “He’s not paid to talk, he’s paid to _ watch you _.” She snaps her fingers a few times and jerks her arm in Hongjoong’s direction. “Youngchul, check his bag. If you find anything electronic then send it to the incinerator.”

Youngchul grunts, advancing in long powerful strides into the room to paw through the duffel, not that Hongjoong is worried he’ll find anything. His laptop and everything else important is safely locked away in Yunho’s apartment. Hongjoong swallows tight while his face aches from the scabbed over knot where his mother’s ring caught him. Yunho should be at home either eating or taking a nap. 

Youngchul throws a collection of underwear to the ground and toes through the stack. 

Once upon a time, Hongjoong could have closed his eyes and let his mind wander away until the soul connection tugging behind his navel led him in Yunho’s direction, fed him a feedback loop of whatever Yunho was doing, let him see and smell and hear how Yunho was faring without Hongjoong around. But that tether is gone. Their connection is complete and, aside from the dreams they still share, there is no way for Hongjoong to keep tabs on his soulmate.

His fingers shake.

Pain flares in his chest and he winces. Indigestion, maybe, or a phantom pang of loss shooting down through his arteries.

Youngchul makes a show of stomping the clothes on the ground and the bag in every conceivable direction until the whole pile is a flattened boot-printed mess. Misun tuts.

“Nothing?”

Youngchul shakes his head and steps back out of the room, mission complete.

His mother rounds on him once the bodyguard is bustling around in the kitchen on the other side of her home. “You even _ think _ about setting foot outside of this building and Youngchul breaks every single one of your fingers in eight places. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Good.” Misun smooths her palms over the wrinkled edges of her Versace skirt. “Now.” She holds her arms open. “Aren’t you happy to be home? This is so much better to be a family again, Hongjoong-ah, come give your mother a hug.”

Hongjoong stays rigid while his mother wraps her bony malicious arms around his back in a brief hug as if she’s trying to switch back to being a normal person. She smells like Chanel No.5, a gut wrenchingly cloying scent that clings to the back of his throat nearly gagging him the longer she invades his space. “No more running away, Hongjoong. This is what’s best for you, someday you’ll understand.”

Youngchul passes the two of them in the doorway with a sandwich mounded high with shaved pork and at least three cheeses.

_ I understand you’re a psychopath_, he doesn’t say while keeping his facial expression neutral and tensing his muscles so his body doesn’t shake in fear. _ You and dad both._

**\--------------**

At some point, Hongjoong falls asleep and wakes up disoriented in the backseat of a car he doesn’t recognize. His vantage point is oddly low, and his seatbelt features some sort of old teddy bear missing an eye wrapped around the sharp edges. Two people in the driver and passenger seats whisper frantically at each other, and man and a woman Hongjoong vaguely recognizes but can’t quite put his finger on from where.

“Isn’t the gala tonight?” The woman hisses under her breath. “We’re going to be late and miss our chance to expose him.”

“Yes, but Beomseok isn’t due to make his speech until late. We have some time, darling.”

The woman nervously glances back in Hongjoong’s direction and smiles wan at him before turning back in her seat. “I still think bringing Yunho along for the ride was a bad decision. We should turn around and take him home, leave him with your mother or a sitter.”

Hongjoong’s stomach lurches hard into his throat. Yunho. Yunho, Yunho, Yunho, this is Yunho’s _ parents’ car_. These are the people Hongjoong has only ever seen in bits and pieces. Literally.

The man reaches over to thumb against the woman’s knuckles turning white where she’s gripping to the edge of her skirt. “I told you we need him with us so security doesn’t turn us away at the door. It’s a charity function for sick kids, they can’t turn away a family with a leukemia patient. The optics would be _ horrible_.”

“But_—_”

“It will be fine,” he says. “We’ll drop him off at the Christmas tree with the other kids and mingle until Beomseok shows up. The arrest will take less than four minutes and then we’ll be out again and the rest of the team can swoop in on our signal.”

The woman reaches back to touch Hongjoong’s_—__Yunho’s _ knee. 

“I still don’t see why it has to be us that makes the arrest. We’re _ researchers_, not cops.”

Yunho’s father shrugs. “Sangchul assured me_—_”

His voice is cut off by the loud squealing sound of an engine barreling towards them at speed and Yunho’s mother screams. The sound lasts only for a moment before the car jerks, crushes in on itself, and glass leaves a searing line of heat along Hongjoong’s cheek.

He blinks. There’s blood _ everywhere_. Yunho’s father makes a wet gurgling sort of noise before his body droops along the hood of the car. Hongjoong tries to suck in air but his chest hurts. Everything _ hurts._

This is the part he remembers. His chest burning over like it’s full of liquid magma_—_broken ribs, he recalls, bruises from his neck to his hip from the pull of his seatbelt. Now there’s the added addition of pain in his face_—_in _ Yunho’s _ face_—_and the sound of his screams being pulled involuntarily from his throat.

The driver of the limo, Jongho's father, stumbles out, puking once on the side of the road, before Park Misun makes her grand entrance slipping out of a padded full body suit so she can smooth down her gown and apply a deep burgundy stain to her lips.

He can’t hear them over Yunho’s wailing and the distant noise of sirens flaring to life, but he can see her smiling in triumph as she pulls a wad of bills from her purse and smugly thumbs through the stack.

As if by magic, the whole scene pops out of existence to be replaced by the familiar warmth of Yunho’s bedroom where his soulmate is curled up into a ball in the middle of the bed.

Hongjoong stumbles from the shock, falls to his knees and whispers, “Yunho? Is that really you?”

His soulmate flinches and keeps his head buried. “I don’t want to speak to you right now.”

And while that’s a fair emotional response to have when faced with someone that walked out without a word, Hongjoong still takes the statement with a whoosh of breath like he’s been punched in the gut. 

“Yunho, I can explain_—_”

Yunho finally sits up and his face is a mash of anger and hurt all twisted up together in blotchy red streaks from his cheeks to his neck. “Explain? Explain what? How you left without a word and then suddenly show up over the radio saying your soulmate is, and I am _ quoting you here_, a ‘lovely woman’?”

Hongjoong shakes his head. “Yunho that’s not_—_I only said that because my mother_—_”

Yunho snorts. “Right. Mommy dearest.”

“Yunho,” Hongjoong begs, “Please, you have to understand, I’m doing this for us.”

“How?” Yunho yells at him. “How is suddenly showing the world your soulmate is some random woman doing anything for _ us _? I thought we were going to figure out what to do about your mom situation together! Why do you always have to run off by yourself?”

“Because she’s dangerous and I refuse to let you become a focus for her cruelty.” Hongjoong can feel a slow line of hot blood work its way down his cheek as he remembers the cutting slap she’d given him at the station. Yunho’s face pales to an inhuman sheet white. “Because I’m going to destroy my family and I will not let them destroy you, too. They knew where you lived this entire time, Yunho. They tracked my position. _They knew!_”

For all his bluster, Yunho scrambles off the bed to touch delicately at the cut in Hongjoong’s cheek sluggishly bleeding to drip off his chin to the floor where it ripples in dreamlike waves against the surface.

“Did she_—_?”

Hongjoong nods, fisting his hands in Yunho’s sleep shirt as their connection buzzes hard from the close proximity. “Yes.”

“Oh, Hongjoong-ah…” Yunho trails off. His fingers are a sparking fuzz of a lit fuse against Hongjoong’s cheek and he leans into the touch as Yunho slowly drags his fingertips over the worst of the jagged edges. “Wooyoung called me when he heard the radio segment.”

Hongjoong hums and closes his eyes, leaning forward until he’s breathing in the familiar scent of cheap laundry detergent over an evaporated trail of minty body wash. 

“Aren’t you scared?” Yunho finally questions. “Being alone wherever you are?”

“I’m where I’ve always been, locked up in my mother’s house.” Hongjoong sighs, “And I’m not alone.” 

When Yunho makes a questioning noise_—_adorable little half-formed ‘wuh’ falling from his mouth_—_Hongjoong has to keep his face hidden against Yunho’s shirt. He wiggles his fingers around to make the vines and curling ferns encircling his skin shift. “I have _ you _ with me.”

A beat. A ragged inhale next to his ear. Yunho’s arms coming up to crush their bodies together. “Jagiyah_—_”

“Two weeks,” Hongjoong says plaintively into Yunho’s chest. “Two weeks and I’ll be home for good. All this will be over, I’ll make sure of it.”

Yunho threads his fingers through the hair at the back of his skull tender sweet and Hongjoong shivers hard, pitiful mewling whine held in check by sheer force of will. “I’ve waited a lifetime for you,” Yunho admits quietly, “Maybe two weeks won’t be so bad.”

“Two weeks and then never again,” Hongjoong agrees. “And someday when we get married I’m going to do the American thing by taking your last name. I’m so fucking tired of being a Kim.”

Yunho laughs, and laughs, and laughs harder until he’s crying loud hiccuping sobs into Hongjoong's neck and Hongjoong is kissing away the tears as best as he can, crushing their mouths together when Yunho leans up into him.

“One last thing.”

Yunho hums, blinking slow and out of sync as his arms begin to fade away. Hongjoong grabs at his face, tapping Yunho’s cheeks in urgency. “Don’t believe a single thing about me unless I’m the one saying it _to_ _ you_. Got it? Only from me.”

“Only you,” Yunho agrees. He places one last gentle kiss to the center of Hongjoong’s left palm, mouth wet at the edge from his tears and a little bit of accidental drool. “I’m going to try to trust you.”

“Okay,” Hongjoong husks, overwhelmed and guilty. “Okay.”

Offering up one crooked grin, Yunho fades out to nothing leaving Hongjoong grasping at empty air and suffocating in his own dream.

This is enough.

This will have to be enough for now.

**\--------------**

Being locked away unable to contact the outside world is much harder in practice than it is in theory. He's no closer to solving the puzzle connecting his father to the chief of police, or even what Yunho's parents were doing in that strange glimpse of the past. He gains even less information during the brief hours he and Yunho manage to share dream spaces, too busy losing themselves to touch while they have the chance rather than talking about the strain the connection is put under being so far away from each other for so long.

According to Yunho, Wooyoung is incandescently angry, both at Hongjoong himself and at Jongho for helping his father try to further blackmail his best friend. San and Mingi are keeping themselves at a distance, only coming over to keep Yunho occupied when he calls either of them when the separation and the cramping loneliness gets to be too much. Though, Seonghwa and Yeosang apparently demand updates at a near constant rate so where Yunho finds the time to be lonely...well. 

“I’ve had to literally yell at them that if they don’t cut it out I’m going to stop responding,” Yunho tells him while they lounge on the sand of a warm beach somewhere in the tropics, conjured up from reading too many travel magazines strewn about Misun’s living room. Three yachts and one sailboat flicker in and out of each other at odd angles like the dream can't decide if this is a party island for snobby rich kids in seersucker suits and board shorts or just some far away destination for the lonely javelin fisher. 

Hongjoong laughs, curled into Yunho’s side naked as the day he was born. “They’re just worried.”

“Twenty seven text messages, hyung,” Yunho pouts. He pours a phantom handful of sand over Hongjoong’s thigh and they watch as it fizzles out of existence as soon as it touches skin. “I’m worried too. That bodyguard guy makes me nervous.”

“Mmm.” Hongjoong lazily swirls a finger around the dark brown of Yunho’s nipple until Yunho is cringing away from the touch with a stifled laugh. “I think he’d rather just collect paychecks by making sandwiches and giving me the evil eye instead of actually having to rough me up.” 

It helps that Youngchul was there taking pictures when Hongjoong was stripped to nothing but his underwear and had seen how scrawny his arms and legs were. There was no competition if push came to shove. And while Hongjoong may fantasize about kicking Youngchul in the dick and running out of the apartment, the chances of that happening are pretty much zilch anyway.

Four days of putting up with Youngchul shadowing his every move in his mother’s penthouse like to the kitchen for drinks or the bathroom to piss, the plans have apparently changed. Misun comes home Tuesday afternoon with a new packet in her hands and an aggravated slant on her perpetually pursed mouth. Hongjoong thinks she needs another round of botox if she’s going to stay under the delusion that Best Actress Nominee Park Misun is impervious to Father Time.

Hongjoong keeps his mouth shut as Misun drops a thick mound of papers into his lap with a headshot of some actress clipped to the front.

“Memorize all of this before the banquet,” she says. “We have to make this public introduction believable so the press doesn’t go off the rails reporting on that boy of yours parading around town with his marks out again.” She pokes at his chest with the end of a knobby stiletto tipped nail. “I won’t have you embarrassing me again, Kim Hongjoong.”

“I won’t, mother,” Hongjoong replies neutrally as if he’s not internally twisting up all of his fingers and toes at the lie. “Who is this?”

“We’re working on such a time crunch,” Misun sighs, completely and utterly ignoring him.”And finding a henna artist willing to do this much work at such short notice has been nigh impossible. Are you happy knowing you've put me in such an awkward position? My god the endless paperwork I'm having to go through for _ your _ benefit is astounding.”

Hongjoong flips through the first few pages that read like baby’s first résumé. The name he’d seen last week, Shin Youkyung, is a fledgling actress newly contracted under the Park Misun umbrella and has apparently been in love with one Kim Hongjoong ever since she heard him speak about his family at a charity gala broadcasted on the local news. He was sixteen at the time, and spotty all along his chin, bored out of his skull and only put in a token amount of effort to read off the cue cards he’d been handed two seconds before taking the stage. Hongjoong remembers leaving that same banquet to bruise his knees on the hard cement flooring of a nondescript bathroom two floors down and then calling Wooyoung an hour later to let his almost-not quite boyfriend fuck him brainless in front of a wall of mirrors in Wooyoung’s dance studio.

She's also the daughter of the police chief and more than likely Hongjoong's mystery soulmate. His fake one anyway.

He flips another page and lands on a series of questions and answers. A lengthy ‘Get to Know Me!’ she’d answered in extreme detail.

“What are you going to do about Seungho?” Hongjoong hedges.

Misun twirls in front of a mirror, bending low to check the swell of her cleavage in her latest acquisition from Dior. “Who?”

“The blackmailer.”

“Oh. _ Him _ and that snot nosed girl with the bad hair.” Misun waves Hongjoong off. “Youngchul will take care of that nasty business for us.”

Youngchul, ever a man of few words, only grunts deeply and wanders away with a fistful of half eaten beef jerky and what appears to be a well worn self-help book Hongjoong doesn't recognize titled 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' stuffed up underneath one armpit. Misun watches him leave the room with obvious lust gleaming in her eyes, mouth hanging open just a touch, and Hongjoong gags so hard internally it almost becomes external. Saving himself from even more emotional and mental trauma, Hongjoong takes the stack of papers with him back to his room.

“I’ll just go read up on my future bride, shall I?”

Misun makes no move to acknowledge him, just adjusts the underwire straining beneath her bosom and stalks after his bodyguard with something like intent.

“Right.”

**\--------------**

Reading through the insurmountable detailed history of Shin Youkyung’s life story is a little like reading a toddler’s idea of a fairy tale. Raised by a stay at home mom while her father worked tirelessly to support his family, eventually making his way through the ranks until he was able to land a more lucrative office job and come home more often. She makes sure to lay it on thick about how much she loved Park Misun’s movies, her acting, how much she admired a woman dominating a section of the public relations market with an iron fist. All she wants is to become an actress at the same level.

Youkyung waxes poetic about hearing Hongjoong speak for the first time, how calming his voice was and how she was so _ sure_, down to her core, that they belonged together. 

“I told my father, I said, ‘Daddy, you absolutely _ must _ find a way for us to meet face to face’,” she bashfully recounts under the sections titled: Aspirations. “I am delighted to know Hongjoong feels the same way.”

Hongjoong shreds that page for his own peace of mind. Apparently he’s said a lot of things to this woman that he is only just now finding out about. He should be angry, but all he feels is disgust. How long had Misun been planning this? How long had his father been a willing participant in pimping out his son? 

Youngchul gives him a meaningful glare when Hongjoong goes to dunk the whole thing in the toilet, so Hongjoong opts instead to throw it at his bedroom wall.

**\--------------**

Hongjoong goes stir crazy at the beginning of week two only three days to D-Day. After pestering both his mother in the brief window she'd been speeding around the house making last minute additions to her purse, possibly legitimately on a super dose of amphetamines, and Youngchul trying to get some light reading done in the living room (re: watching trashy daytime television with a book only propped in his lap for show), Hongjoong convinces them both to at least check his university email to inform professors he's taking an unexpected leave of absence. It could lead to awkward inquiries if he stopped showing up to class when he was a meticulously punctual student, maybe they'll sell information like that to a gossip site or two that could spin his absence into suggestions Hongjoong has gone AWOL on a drug and alcohol bender.

"I'm just trying to avoid causing any undue stress," Hongjoong wheedles while his mother, black eyed and sniffling intermittently, considers it for all of thirty seconds before zipping her way down to the building's lobby where another driver is waiting with a hurried and off hand, "Whatever, just get it done." 

Youngchul, for once, allows him to dick around on his mother's fancy Mac setup without hovering over his shoulder. Hongjoong uses the opportunity to look into the crash, because something in the back of his brain keeps whispering something doesn't add up. Why would Misun cover for a no nothing employee who drove under the influence of a prescription drug that could just as easily passed off as something he brought on the job rather than something Misun gave him? If it were her word against his, then public opinion would obviously side with the mostly loved celebrity instead of her sweaty pain killer addicted chauffeur.

The search leaves him empty handed considering he has no date to go off of, no concrete names since Yunho couldn't remember them, no police report filed away, and Hongjoong can only go through a certain number of 'Jeong car crash' searches on public news sites before he has to give up.

The thumb drive remains a stubborn black box of unanswerable questions.

"Hey, bodyguard dude," he calls down the hall. Youngchul doesn't say anything back, but Hongjoong assumes he heard him. "You in the business of harassing paps? We've had a group set up shop outside the building for two days now."

Struck by sudden inspiration in his search for answers, Hongjoong uses the home phone to make a call to the hospital while Youngchul is busy harassing a minivan with blacked out windows making camp across the street from the building. It’s a number he memorized so long ago when he had to, when he was still playing a dangerous game of keep away with Wooyoung and his mother and needed an alibi of where he’d been. An orderly picks up after a series of transfers to the children’s ward and Hongjoong begs to speak with Hyojung.

“I’m sorry, sir, but our head nurse is currently doing her rounds. Can I take a message?”

“No, I need to speak to her now. It’s an emergency,” Hongjoong begs. “It will only take a few minutes of her time.”

“Sir, I can’t just_—_”

“Tell her it’s her son calling,” Hongjoong interrupts and hopes the bluff pays off.

The man on the line sighs noisily but deigns to set the phone down and track down Hyojung. Hongjoong keeps one eye on the door and one ear open for the sound of anyone approaching the door, fingers tapping a formless rhythm along the marble surface of the sofa table they keep the phone sitting on.

The line crackles. 

“Hongjoong! How are you holding up, love? The ward just isn’t the same since—”

“Hyojung,” Hongjoong interrupts her before he can be sidetracked by the ever present swirl of grief floating just beneath the surface. He’s had no time to truly process. “Can you do me a favor?”

“If it’s within my power, of course.” Hyojung says.

“You have access to my medical records, right?” Hyojung tells him she can and asks what this is about, is he alright? Has he come down with something chronic? Hongjoong waves away her concern. “I’m fine, but can you look up the date I came into the pediatric ward for the first time? After my ribs were broken in that bad accident.”

“Oh, love, we shouldn’t go poking into old files like that willy-nilly,” Hyojung tries to reason. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t—look, please, you’re the only one I can trust with this. Can you find out for me or not?”

Hyojung sighs roughly over their connection and Hongjoong can just make out the sound of fingers clicking on a keyboard. “December 3, 2004. Need the time of admittance or is that enough for you?”

“That’s enough,” Hongjoong says. “That’s plenty, thank you.”

He hangs up before Hyojung can ask him anymore questions and considers laughing.

December 3, 2004.

And fifteen years to the day Hongjoong gets swept off his feet at a bus stop just outside his old home. The cosmic coincidence would be funny if it wasn’t so goddamned _ sad_.

But it's something to go off. A jumping point. Hongjoong enters the date into every public database he can think of again until, finally, he hits pay dirt. What he finds is so ridiculously insane Hongjoong spends a long, nerveless moment reading and rereading the headline until the lines stop resembling anything that might be words.

Of course.

_Of-fucking-course_.

Like the final thread of a tapestry being woven into place, Hongjoong can finally see the whole of the picture his parents have been so adamantly keeping hidden. If what Jongho had mentioned was true, then this would explain why his parents needed to buy up property under his name to funnel cash away from their pristine names. 

_"**BREAKING NEWS: COUPLE AT CENTER OF ORGAN TRAFFICKING TASK FORCE KILLED IN APPARENT DRUNK DRIVING ACCIDENT**_

_First responders say Jeong Joonho (34), along with his wife Min Jiyoung (32) and son Jeong Yunho (7), were found dead last night in an apparent drunk driving incident involving one vehicle. Eye witnesses say the couple were seen speeding down the highway when they veered off the center lane to crash headlong into the cement divider. Joonho had recently made a statement to the press just last week implicating the husband of actress Park Misun in a human organ trafficking sting started nearly six months ago. Kim Beomseok has reportedly denied any involvement and called the investigation a waste of time and resources._

_Sgt. Shin Sangchul says a toxicology report has been ordered and the investigation ongoing..."_

He saves the headline in a new document to the thumbdrive for safekeeping, clears any incriminating evidence of his snooping from his mother's computer, and leaves her office feeling wrong and off-footed. Youngchul eyes the tumbdrive in his hand but says nothing to stop him from leaving.

If he's understanding this right, then Kim Beomseok is no doubt accepting cash donations from high-dollar clients willing to buy their way up to the top of the organ donor lists. More than likely, his father is hiring shady thugsters to offer up small cash incentives to get the destitute and desperate to offer up their bodies in a bid to keep existing or to pay for their next fix. Misun puts up with it because it nets her cushy acting jobs and a radio station dedicated to her voice and her opinions and her vanity. The now chief of police probably allows all this to happen under his watch, because Beomseok is no doubt the reason he sped his way through the ranks from a beat cop working routine traffic problems to head of the whole organization.

Sangchul has the most important chess piece: holding the shameful fact over Kim Beomseok's head that the accident involving Yunho's parents was anything but a carefully calculated risk of Kim Beomseok's family in exchange for being safely hidden away from medical malpractice suits. And now, fifteen years later, Hongjoong is supposed to keep his head down and accept the chief's only daughter as his make believe soulmate just because she's been infatuated with him since Hongjoong had made his first bored infomercial for Park Misun's radio show.

Would Yunho even want to associate with him after this? Would he even _care a_fter all of this comes to light and he finds out what Hongjoong's parents have done? What they've deprived him of?

Hongjoong stumbles into the bathroom attached to his bedroom and loses everything he's eaten in the last 48-hour span into the toilet.

**\--------------**

The dreamscape tonight is an open field with a darkened sky filled with constellations of stars and nebula Hongjoong has only ever seen on the internet, though somehow the sun still shines over them in a haze of warmth. 

Yunho holds Hongjoong from behind, arms wrapped around Hongjoong’s middle, and he lets out a thin sigh of resignation against Hongjoong’s neck. “I want to say I’m shocked, but, honestly, I kind of suspected my parents were killed in that crash for a reason.”

Hongjoong stays mute. Shame and guilt vying for first place in his throat turning his vocal chords to frozen lumps. Yunho squeezes him tighter.

“Do you...do you think my parents had a proper burial?”

“Maybe.” Hongjoong considers the sprawling hills rolling outward around them into some shorn off faded abyss. “If we can find them, we should pay them a visit after all this is finished.”

Yunho mumbles agreement. They stand in the middle of this landscape basking in the simple pleasure of being able to see and touch when in reality they may as well exist in different hemispheres. Hongjoong looks at the sky and keeps count of each and every star with a short tap to Yunho’s knuckles, every contact a burning zap of electric energy.

Yunho is first to break the comfortable silence. “It hurts not having you here.”

“God, I know.” Hongjoong breathes deep through his nose to calm his nerves. He’s done so well not to think about the way his body keeps betraying him at inconvenient moments: his knees giving way stepping out of the shower, his hands shaking when he’s trying to pour a glass of water, his teeth chattering with cold even though the thermostat is cranked up to high. “It hurts me too. Everything fucking _ hurts _ all the time.”

Yunho dips down to slide his mouth over Hongjoong’s neck. “Let me make it better.”

Hongjoong shivers, not from the cold. 

“Yunho?”

His soulmate shakes his head once. “Just trust me.”

Hongjoong lets himself be guided by Yunho’s capable hands to the soft grass beneath them, laughing a little breathlessly when his clothing seems to magically disappear with one heated glance. Yunho smiles at him once, sharp, before leaning over him to trail wet and biting kisses over each and every blooming mark on Hongjoong’s trunk like he had before, what feels like eons ago. And because this was a dream, and dreams never made sense anyway, when Yunho reaches down over the soft swell of his dick and under to touch at his ass, his fingertips are already sticky wet with lube.

Hongjoong sucks in a wounded sounding gasp at the first shockingly warm touch against his hole and his back arches from the sizzling heat starting to burn in his groin.

“Yun_—_”

Yunho cuts him off with a bruising kiss. Hongjoong gets so wrapped up in the feel of Yunho’s teeth and tongue, at the greedy push-pull between them, that he almost misses the first easy slide of Yunho’s fingers into his body_—_two at a time because his dream self was made to take them. Yunho moves away from his mouth again to lick a hot stripe from Hongjoong’s left nipple to the dip of his navel and lower still until Yunho is mouthing just shy of his cock, smirking when Hongjoong kicks feebly in the air at the merciless tease.

“Yunho, please,” Hongjoong pants raggedly. He tries to reach out to touch Yunho_—_to drag his mouth back up so he can kiss those cherry red lips, to pull Yunho down over his dick and fuck his throat raw, to do _ something—_but he finds his arms planted against the ground as if an immense force is holding them down. He whines. “God, please, let me touch you.”

“No,” Yunho tsks with a shake of his head. “I said I wanted to take care of you and that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He sucks a mark into the meat of one thigh while his fingers continue to probe at a leisurely, maddening pace. “Just sit back and relax, hyung-ah.”

“You say that as if I have any other choice,” Hongjoong whimpers. Yunho only ignores him to suck another mean bruise to the inside of his other thigh and roves over the place where thigh meets groin, tongues at the creased line of ferns and ivy twisting up along his hip, until Yunho can take him into his mouth and systematically take Hongjoong apart.

Yunho opens him up at a pace that would make a snail jealous, always backing off at the last second when Hongjoong is so close he’s babbling nonsense into the air and thrusting weakly against Yunho's face and the tight, wet suction of his mouth. He’s a mess of noise and abortive jerks when he tries to wedge his hips lower over Yunho’s fingers that are somehow dripping enough lube down over the crack of his ass they make filthy squelching sounds on every mean shove of Yunho’s wrist.

Beneath a beautiful backdrop of stars and phantom sunlight, Yunho finally _finally_ pushes in until he bottoms out, until Hongjoong can feel the hot slap of Yunho’s balls against his ass and cries out from the way his body opens up like he was created just for this: just to take Yunho’s fingers and his tongue and his cock. The grass is smooth beneath his back as Hongjoong slips over it with every careful nudge of Yunho’s hips. He can feel his cock leaving a sticky trail of precum against his belly on every thrust. Hongjoong would feel a little shameful about it if Yunho weren't staring down at him with his pupils blown wide like he wants to devour Hongjoong whole.

“You’re so_—_you’re so beautiful, Hongjoong,” Yunho growls down at him, fucking his hips so hard and so good Hongjoong hears himself begging a litany of _please _and _god _and _so good_. “Fucking, god, every inch of you is so fucking perfect, you know that? You were _ made _ for me.”

It’s like he’s being lit up from the inside out, Hongjoong hazily thinks through the fog of deep gut churning arousal. Their connection is flaring so urgently in his fingers and his toes Hongjoong wonders if he's glowing, if Yunho can feel the electricity thundering in his veins trying to reach up and out of his skin. He can feel Yunho’s cock in his stomach, in his groin, in the back of his fucking throat and at some point Hongjoong is going to forget how to function without having some part of Yunho boring into his body like he’s making camp. Yunho takes him into his wet fist, jerks him off quick. His whole body feels weightless with anticipation of falling over the edge and he wants desperately to take Yunho with him, to feel his soulmate leave him wet and raw and fucked open like this always.

“Come for me, hyung,” Yunho demands with a smug grin on his face, the dickhead. “Right now, Hongjoong. I want to feel you.”

“What did I say about telling me what to do?” Hongjoong sobs back, but by then the first crashing tidal wave of his orgasm is slamming into him in one swift rush. Yunho groans into his ear as his hand tightens just shy of too tight and Hongjoong can feel him tense and jerk into the grasping clench of his body.

Hongjoong huffs while Yunho catches his breath with his sweaty forehead resting on the cluster of carnations on Hongjoong’s throat. “If I wake up with cum in my ass, I am staging a _ riot_.”

Yunho laughs.

**\--------------**

Hongjoong wakes up slowly the day of the charity banquet with Yunho’s laughter still echoing in his ears. 

He can do this.

**\--------------**

Misun lays out a fine brocade suit the color of midnight with gloves to match for him to change into before they leave for the venue. It’s been a long time since he’s willingly worn a suit this fine, his usual attire for these things a simple blazer over a button down and slacks to match. Hongjoong gets into each piece as if he’s layering on armor, dutifully fastening each frustratingly small button and pressing the seams flat.

The old man at that shop had done an excellent job, Hongjoong notes. It’s a little loose in the waist, but that was mostly due to Youngchul staging a near constant war on the fridge stocks than any real effort to lose weight on Hongjoong’s part. 

Youngchul gives him a single nod and accompanies him to the ground floor where the limo is waiting. 

For the first time in days, Hongjoong’s hands don’t shake. He stays rock steady. The power of mutual orgasms, he supposes. 

A nameless assistant meets him at the door with a harried, “Get to the back before anyone sees you, we need a last minute touch up.”

“Touch up?”

The assistant shakes her head and leads him to the back of the venue through a series of doors away from the main hall starting to fill with guests. It’s a new face in the revolving door of PAs, Hongjoong notes. Maybe the clipboard girl from the station made good on his advice and skedaddled before things get hairy. Maybe she got a promotion for keeping her mouth shut about Misun slapping the absolute shit out of him the other day.

He’s led to the same room as before when they’d propped Yunho up backstage to sign waivers and keep out of sight. Shin Youkyung is nowhere near as endearing as Yunho had been with his wrists and his ankles dangling out of a suit too small for his frame. She’s cute, gorgeous even, wrapped up in a golden strapless dress to show off as much skin as possible. Black henna flora trails over her arms and her throat, down into her cleavage and curling along one thigh to her knee.

Youkyung smiles excitedly at him and waves. Hongjoong offers up some semblance of a smile back and keeps quiet.

Misun and an Indian woman are having a pointed and angry conversation. Misun points at a patch of...something that could be creeping vines on Youkyung’s arm. 

“It doesn’t have to be an exact replica, but you missed a whole section of_—_of whatever flower that is!” Misun grabs at Youkyung’s arm to force her into the henna artist’s personal bubble. “Fix it!”

“You’re hurting me,” Youkyung says with a whine. “I wanna say hi to my fiance!”

“You can when she gets finished with you, darling,” his mother coos, though her jaw is visibly clenched. “Hongjoong, take off your jacket and show this woman what she forgot to include.”

Youkyung makes shy overwhelmed noises when Hongjoong starts unbuttoning that he ignores. The woman in charge of recreating the swirl of flowers tuts when he reveals his arm and the cluster of prunella circling around his elbow.

“I can do this thing in two hours, maybe.” Her hand is warm where she carefully twists at Hongjoong’s skin to get a better idea of what she’s working with. She’s the first person to touch the marks who isn’t Yunho, and while she’s nice and isn’t trying to twist his arm off, it still makes every hair on his head stand on end in unease. She finally releases him just as Hongjoong’s stomach begins to churn hot and he can taste the looming threat of sick in the back of his throat.

Misun stomps her foot. “We need this finished in twenty minutes.”

The woman clicks her tongue again. “Thirty minutes and I can make one sprig bloom.”

Misun bites at her thumb nail, careful not to dig too hard and ruin her polish, before she’s nodding her head and snapping her fingers until a second PA slides into the room. “Make it happen,” she says to the henna artist. “We need to stall for time. Tell the caterers to hand out the canapes early,” she snaps at her assistant while they scurry off to make it happen, and rounds on her heel to address Hongjoong.

“And _ you _,” she points at him angrily, “Put your fucking shirt back on.”

Thankfully, Hongjoong doesn't have to suffer any more time with either his mother of Youkyung, who pouts like a toddler whose favorite toy has been taken away when he steps out of the room still buttoning his coat.

Youngchul is waiting outside leaning up against the wall with his arms held akimbo to his chest. Hongjoong gives him a nod of acknowledgement before turning on his heel to make his way back to the entrance to greet his mother’s guests.

Youngchul clears his throat. “Kim Hongjoong.”

He stops without turning back. “Yes?”

“You got that USB with you?”

Youngchul holds a palm outward and Hongjoong shrugs, tossing the metal fob up for Youngchul to catch because it’s not as if he’ll need it after tonight. Youngchul gives him a curt nod before shoving the device in his own pocket and trails after Hongjoong into the entrance hall where he stands only three feet behind him at all times while they wait for the call back to the stage.

Misun spins a heart wrenching tale of starcrossed lovers to the auditorium of adoring fans and her network of celebrity guests while he and Youkyung hang back behind the curtain. Youkyung bounces next to him, half out of excitement and half in a bid to help the henna dry down faster to keep it from smudging. She’s having to keep her elbow at an odd angle so that it doesn’t touch the gold beading in her dress. Youkyung tries to make whispered and furtive small talk. What’s it like to go to college? Are classes hard? She heard he was heavily invested in the arts and would he let her listen to his music sometime? Maybe their first dance could be to a song Hongjoong writes exclusively _for her_.

Hongjoong ignores her.

It’s rude, and possibly needlessly cruel of him, but this girl_—_this woman, he should say_—_had essentially begged her father into getting her set up as Hongjoong’s soulmate and his future wife thanks to a series of unfortunate and criminal events.

When he’s waved on stage to give his own speech, Hongjoong plasters on his network television friendly smile and walks out to the podium where he and his mother trade places.

Hongjoong looks out into the sea of B and C level actors, actresses, their hired bodyguards only vaguely hovering in the background for looks, the rank and file of personal assistants nervously snaking in between tables with sweating flutes of only mid-tier champagne, the glowing look of triumph on his mother’s face butting up against the bright-eyed woman’s cheek covered head to toe in blackened henna and he makes a decision.

Twenty-two years and tired of cowardice, Hongjoong smiles at the crowd and leans close to the microphone. His voice crackles over the surround system.

“Good evening.”

**\--------------**

Local networks have decided to stream the event in lieu of their regular programming and several small businesses tune in to watch, including the hole in the wall diner only a short walking distance from the venue.

On screen, Kim Hongjoong leans into the microphone with a grin.

“Good evening,” he says, waiting for the light round of clapping to subside. “I think everyone here knows this already, but my name is Kim Hongjoong and I am the son of Park Misun and Kim Beomseok. I’m sure most of you have either seen or read about their whirlwind love story, yes?” 

Laughter and more clapping. Hongjoong remains passively smiling at the camera.

A woman leaning on the restaurant’s register sighs. “What a handsome young man.”

Near the back, nursing his second helping of soju, a man tsks and finishes a deep gulp of alcohol, slamming the empty glass to the tabletop with a harsh clack. 

Hongjoong continues, “You know, I used to be one of those people that didn’t believe in soulmates or of falling in love with the person the universe has picked out for me. Tonight, I have the privilege to tell everyone gathered here, and those listening and watching at home, that I am a monumental idiot, because meeting my soulmate was the single best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He glances off stage to smile harder at someone hidden just beyond the curtain.

The woman at the register sighs louder, though it’s an obvious whoosh of dejection.

Another bottle of soju knocked back, the man in the back with a snapback shoved over his head seethes as celebrity son Kim Hongjoong continues to wax poetic about the life changing moment when he locked eyes on his soulmate.

“I saw them on the street and ran away,” Hongjoong laughs. “I didn’t want to go near them.”

Confused murmurs ripple through the crowd like waves unfurling outward on a still lake. Park Misun had never mentioned Hongjoong seeing and fleeing from his soul connection, rather she’d been on her radio show excitedly telling listeners Hongjoong was only waiting to touch his soulmate live for the world to see like his mother before him.

“This may be selfish of me, but I have never felt more beautiful than when their soul markings covered my skin.” He grins as the confusion in the crowd seems to reach a fever pitch even over the tinny sound coming from the aging speakers around the restaurant interior. Kim Hongjoong takes a deep breath. “I know you’re all here tonight to meet them.”

Cheering. Someone whistles. The man swallows the last dregs of his soju and taps his glass to order another as Kim Hongjoong reaches off stage…

**\--------------**

Hongjoong holds his palm out towards Youkyung with his eyebrows raised, wiggling his fingers until Misun, giving him a glaring look of warning, allows Youkyung to catwalk across the stage with her blackened henna on prominent display. The cameras won’t be able to capture the not quite right quality of her skin nor will the guests clustered around tables just from the cheer amount of stage lights Misun had demanded to make her skin look flawless to the masses. 

Youkyung grins like the cat who’d eaten the canary and twists the arm not currently drying down through Hongjoong’s elbow. He allows the excited cheering and round of clapping to finally calm down while Youkyung waves, before gently extricating his arm from her grip.

He leans closer to the mic. “Unfortunately, my soulmate is not here with us tonight.” Quick, before Youkyung can get away, he swipes his hand rough over the flower drying on her elbow so the henna visibly smudges. It’s not much, just a collection of deep dark brown lines, but it’s enough to show the world the wool being pulled over their eyes. 

Youkyung shrieks and tries to cover up the incriminating marks, but by now it’s too late. The cameras have already zoomed in to the mark, cameras have already started flashing, and Hongjoong sees some of the lower list celebrities holding up their phones to record the momentous occasion with their screens highlighting small sections of their faces. 

“My mother is hosting this gala to defraud you out of your money and your goodwill.” Outrage from behind the curtain echoes out across the room as several PAs hold his mother back from making a spectacle of herself. Youkyung slaps his hand away and stomps off stage, embarrassed and seethingly angry at being called out on the ploy. He shrugs. “To be fair, Park Misun was only going along with this scheme because my father owes the chief of police a favor, and that favor happened to be trying to marry me off to Shin Youkyung, his daughter, who means more to the chief than my freedom.”

The crowd is hushed. Hongjoong wonders where Youngchul is and why hadn't the bodyguard bodyslammed him offstage yet. He decides to shrug that off too.

“My name is Kim Hongjoong,” he tells the crowd. “My soulmate is a man named Jeong Yunho, who you may have seen being shopped around on gossip sites, and I am deeply, irrevocably in love with him. If that makes you uncomfortable, then so be it. I'm only here to speak the truth and finally step away from a family that never loved me.”

He gives the room one last sympathetic look, because he knows how much some of these people paid just to be allowed to breathe the same air as a Park Misun, before he bows low. 

“Have a nice evening,” he quietly murmurs into the mic and steps off the edge of the stage directly in front of him. No one stops him and his march to the auditorium doors: no assistants, no minor celebrities, no donors, not even the Park Misun Industries security detail nervously eyeing him at the doors. Being detained by his mother’s hired goons would do worse for her image than anything he’d already laid out at the podium, so he sidesteps the men wearing dark sunglasses and shiny earpieces to greet the paps waiting just outside the venue doors. 

Bulbs flash.

Hongjoong’s hands are steady.

He strides to the center of the swarm and holds a palm up. “Before any of you ask questions, let me say this: Not too long ago I stole a fistful of my mother's jewelry to pay for a cab ride across town, because my parents will not allow me to hold a job or maintain steady income and have sabotaged any attempts at gaining employment.” 

Several people yell over each other that Hongjoong ignores, intent on getting this story out in the open.

“Please let me finish. My parents are not good people. I've tried to put up with them, I really have, and maybe some part of me loves them because they're family and I'm supposed to, but this is the last straw. My mother forged documents with my signature trying to accuse my real soulmate of kidnapping me that may very well show up in the hands of the Seoul metropolitan police department after tonight.” 

Another round of higher pitched questions, more flashing lights. Someone shoves a giant camera in his face to record him live. 

Hongjoong breathes in the cold snap of winter bleeding into spring until he can taste the icy humidity on the back of his tongue. It tastes like freedom.

The cracking sound of a gunshot is a surprise. Hongjoong gapes at Seungho sweating and smiling grimly at him from across the street just before his ex-lover is tackled by security guarding the entrance, followed by the high pitched wailing screams of the paparazzi around him. It’s been a long time, but there’s a familiar tugging sensation behind his navel. Hongjoong touches at it in wonder thinking Yunho is somewhere nearby, except...

His hand comes away wet with something thick and crimson.

_ Oh_.

Youngchul, amazingly, is the one to catch him when he falls and puts pressure on the wound to staunch the bleeding.

"Kid," he grunts, "have you got some amazingly shitty luck."

**\--------------**

Stuffed into a dark linen suit, Yunho gently touches the glass separating the general public from the gleaming urns and the gilt framed pictures of loved ones and feels his heart twinge. It hurts still, even though he’d been through this pain before, but seeing the rounded brass holding the remains of someone he knew and loved…

“Hi,” he says hoarse, “It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to you, I think, and I’m sorry it’s taken me this long.” He feels awkward standing here speaking to the dead. He fiddles with his fingers, twisting them around each other. “I just wanted you guys to know that I finally met my soulmate and while I don’t think you’d approve of his family, I think you’ll be happy to know he managed to finish what you guys started.” 

Yunho bows deeply at the picture of his family smiling, his parents young and happy, with their son missing several front teeth grinning between them. That Yunho had never known strife. He doesn’t have a scar dented into his cheek and maybe that’s the version of himself that went with his parents into the great beyond, wherever they landed.

“Kim Beomseok is in jail,” he tells them. “They’re still weeding out the network of black market organ harvesters, but there is progress so maybe you can rest easy.”

The urns remain silent, of course, but it feels nice to speak to them now that he knows where his parents are resting after so many years of not knowing.

“I’m still working on myself and going to school, but I hope I’m making you proud a little bit every day.” He gulps down a lump of emotion sitting thick in his throat. “God knows Hongjoong makes me so proud every day he walks around our apartment without his cane, even if it’s for a minute. He’s really strong, mom and dad. You’d love him.”

There’s a soft click and shuffle behind his back. Yunho sees Hongjoong huff while he leans on his medical crutch. His eyes are teary red, but he’s smiling so hard Yunho is helpless but to smile back.

“You done saying hi to your folks?”

Yunho nods, reaching out to hold Hongjoong’s arm to help steady him. Ordinarily Hongjoong fights off the help, determined to be fine all by himself, except today he’s leaning into the touch and allowing Yunho to take his weight. He must be more tired than he’d let on that morning before they left.

“Just about.” Yunho kisses the edge of Hongjoong’s forehead along his hairline. “Finished speaking to Jimin and Jun?”

Hongjoong nods, mute. Unexpectedly, he drops out of Yunho’s grip to bow deeply at the family urns, nearly overbalancing and landing on his face if not for Yunho managing to grab at his hip and his elbow, careful of the still tender area in Hongjoong’s stomach.

“Well that wasn’t cool,” Hongjoong pouts. “I was going to bow and ask them for your hand in marriage, now I just look like an asshole.”

“You look like a man who’s recovering from a _ gunshot _ you nerd.” Yunho laughs at him, even though it’s not funny and Yunho has stayed awake for an innumerable amount of sleepless nights worrying Hongjoong is going to be shot again, or is going to succumb to infection, or someone is going to break into their new apartment situated closer to Wooyoung’s studio and steal Hongjoong away like a thief in the night. “And you can ask me for my hand in marriage instead, you know. I’ll say yes.”

Hongjoong tuts. His face is ashen and pale, pinched inward on a wince of pain, but he’s good natured enough to bop at Yunho’s fingers gently drumming on his arm from nerves. “Stop trying to rush me.”

They slowly shuffle from the mausoleum into the warm and muggy June sunlight. Hongjoong raises his face to the sun and grins.

“Isn’t it bad luck to get engaged on the day of someone else’s wedding anyway?”

Yunho shrugs. “I think our whole lives have been one long string of bad luck.”

Hongjoong leans against his side, breathing heavy under the strain, and Yunho worries they’ve pushed this too far. Maybe they shouldn’t have made a pit stop to speak to the dead on the way to Seonghwa and Yeosang's wedding.

“I want cake,” Hongjoong grumbles when they finally make it back to the car. “If Seonghwa made those ridiculous dick shaped cookies instead of getting a real wedding cake, I’m disowning him.”

“I bet,” Yunho tells him bland. Hongjoong winces again when he clicks the seatbelt into place, panting a little from the pressure. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“I gotta get out and about at some point.” Hongjoong rolls his head along the headrest to smile at him, reaching for Yunho’s hand on the steering wheel. “How do you feel about going on vacation after all this? Somewhere nice with a beach.”

“Whatever you want to do,” Yunho agrees. 

They pass a few billboards with Park Misun’s face graffiti’d over with dark mustaches and hateful messages. After the banquet, her name had essentially been blacklisted. The radio station went under almost overnight and several entertainment shows started interviewing assistants and low level employees to get an inside look into the cruelty of a once beloved actress. Someone had apparently filmed some of the abuse she’d taken out on Hongjoong, who took it without saying a word, always standing stock still while she clawed at his face or his arms or his clothing, breaking his phone or his tablets and walking away when she’d finally calmed down.

Similarly, Kim Beomseok was arrested almost the same night while attempting to flee the country to escape bribery and money laundering charges, petty crimes in comparison to the criminal network spanning across Korea and China. Go Youngchul, the bodyguard hired by Hongjoong’s parents, had apparently been an undercover agent of a larger government sponsored corruption investigation and used the files saved on Hongjoong’s USB to finally gain a warrant for Kim Beomseok and Shin Sangchul’s arrests.

Kim Hongjoong wasn’t awake to see any of it happen, though, too busy fighting for his life in a hospital with a gunshot wound to his stomach. Yunho remembers seeing it happen live on stream and experiencing the burning sensation of a phantom bullet lodged in his own guts as Seungho was shoved into the back of a police cruiser. San rushed him to the hospital where Hongjoong was undergoing surgery, and they’d huddled together on hard plastic seats waiting. And waiting. Watching some of the ferns on Yunho’s knuckles turn crimson red at the edges and feeling helpless.

But Hongjoong is here now, free of the burden of his family and so vibrantly _ alive _ that Yunho feels overwhelmed sometimes by it, even when Hongjoong is angry and frustrated at being unable to move as easily as he did before and taking that frustration out on their dinnerware.

“I’m sorry,” Hongjoong had whimpered one day when his hands had gone numb from the side effects of one of his medications and he’d dropped a plate. ”Sorry, sorry, I’m such a mess.”

Yunho had only swept up the pieces, deposited Hongjoong in the middle of their bed, and kissed him and kissed him until Hongjoong gave in and stopped crying. It was just a plate. They could afford more now that Hongjoong had sold off that building that had been put under his name.

Back in the present, Hongjoong plays around with the radio in search of a station he actually likes. “There’s nothing good playing right now,” he says angrily. “Daytime radio is a travesty.”

“So play your own music,” Yunho offers. “You’ve got plenty saved on your phone. Remember? You had me listen to your latest _ twenty _ tracks last night while I was trying to _ study_.”

“I can't help that I was inspired,” Hongjoong cackles, and pulls up the music saved to his new phone with a grin. “Hey, you want to hear the song I wrote about your nose?”

Yunho taps his fingers on the wheel as they slowly merge into highway traffic. “If I must.”

He takes Hongjoong’s hand into his own across the console and thumbs over the thick black marks still faintly edged in red, still _healing_, and smiles at Hongjoong trying to dance in his seat without aggravating the wound in his side.

Finally being with his soulmate is everything he's ever dreamed of... 

Hongjoong, giggling, shakes away his hand to reach up to push at the tip of Yunho's nose.

...And more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for coming on this ridiculously long 5 month (!) journey with me.  
i appreciate the heck outta you

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/AerClassic/)   
~ Ash


End file.
